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By F. B. Jevons, Litt. D. 

Professor of Philosophy in the University of Durham 



Personality. 

The Idea of God in Early Religions. 
Comparative Religion. 
Philosophy : What is it ? 



PHILOSOPHY 

WHAT IS IT ? 



F; B. JEVONS, Litt.D. 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM 

AUTHOR OF "PERSONALITY," "THE IDEA OF GOD IN EARLY 
RELIGIONS," "COMPARATIVE RELIGION," ETC. 



Cambridge : 
at the University Press 

New York : 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

1914 



K N 



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Copyright, 1914 

BY 

F. B. JEVONS 



TEbe Tftnfcfeerbocfeer tfress, t*ew f etfe 

JUL 10 1914 

©CI.A374724 

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PREFACE 

One of the branches of the Workers' 
Educational Association expressed a de- 
sire to know what Philosophy is; thereby 
assuming that Philosophy is a concern of 
the average man and of practical life, 
and should not be the monopoly of the 
professed student. Of the truth of this 
view there can be no doubt, and this 
book consists of the five lectures which 
were given by way of an attempt, not so 
much to answer their question as to bring 
out the meaning of the question. Hence 
the interrogative form of the title — Philo- 
sophy: what is it ? 

The attempt was necessarily made, in 
the discussion of the question, to avoid 
technical terms as far as possible. With- 
out technical terms it is impossible, it may 
be said, to go very far in the discussion. 
But it should be possible, without them, 

iii 



iv Preface 

to go far enough to open the discussion, 
and to indicate both the nature of an- 
swers which have been given to the ques- 
tion, and the reasons why some of the 
answers are less satisfactory than others. 
Indeed, each of the lectures was followed 
by an hour's discussion in class, which 
served to show that working men and 
women found the question to be interest- 
ing and the answers to admit of debate. 
The lectures are, therefore, now printed, 
on the chance that others also, as well as 
those who heard them, may find the 
question attractive and the answer worth 
discussing. 

F. B. Jevons. 



Hatfield Hall 

Durham 
5 th March, 19 14 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 
Philosophy and Science . 



PAGE 



CHAPTER II 
Materialism and Idealism .... 34 

CHAPTER III 
Scepticism in Philosophy 67 

CHAPTER IV 
Philosophy in Practice ..... 98 

CHAPTER V 
Personality and the Whole . . . .129 

Index 169 



PHILOSOPHY 

WHAT IS IT? 



Philosophy: What is it? 



CHAPTER I 

PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 

In the lives of most, and perhaps of all, of 
us there come moments of dejection, or 
even of despair, when the burden and the 
mystery of this unintelligible world come 
with such crushing weight upon us 
that, in spite even of religion itself, we 
ask, "What does it all mean? What is 
the good of it all?" The questions are 
asked in a despair which implies that there 
is no meaning in it all, and no good in life; 
or that, if there is, at any rate we cannot 
see it. 

But though the questions may be asked, 
and in moments of personal despair are 



2 Philosophy 

asked, in a tone which implies that no 
satisfactory answer is, or can be forth- 
coming, they may also be considered, in 
a calmer mood, as questions which call 
for a reasoned answer, and with regard 
to which we must ask, as a matter 
of deliberation rather than of despair, 
whether an answer is possible at all. 
Now, it is the calm consideration of 
these questions in a reflective mood, and 
of the answers that are to be given to 
them — if any answer can be given — that 
constitutes philosophy. 

Let us look, therefore, once more at the 
questions, "What does it all mean? 
What is the good of it all?" and let us 
see what is implied by the questions. 
The "it" in "What does it all mean? 
What is the good of it all?" evidently 
refers to the experience we have of the 
world and life. Obviously, therefore, it 
is with experience that philosophy has to 
do — with our experience in life; it is 
from experience, therefore, that philo- 
sophy has to start, and it is on experience, 



Philosophy and Science 3 

and the things experienced, that philo- 
sophy has to reflect. 

Next, the questions are put not about 
this or that particular experience, this or 
that particular phase of experience, this or 
that particular department of knowledge, 
or of life; or of experience, but about it 
all — what does it all mean? It is, there- 
fore, all experience, experience as a whole, 
being and knowledge as a whole, that 
philosophy has to contemplate. 

Further, the tone in which the ques- 
tions are put, "What does it all mean? 
What is the good of it all?" implies that 
the person who puts these questions 
despairingly to the universe, took it for 
granted, once upon a time, that life was 
worth living, that there was some good 
in it and that it had some meaning; but 
that now he is beginning to wonder 
whether there is any meaning in it all, 
whether the universe is rational and 
intelligible, and whether there is any good 
in it. He is beginning to be sceptical and 
doubtful on these points. 



4 Philosophy 

Now, you and I may be convinced in 
the bottom of our hearts that the world 
is run on rational and intelligible princi- 
ples, and that there is some good in life, 
and might be more if only men would 
think and act reasonably. But, if we are 
convinced of this, we ought to be able 
to give some answer to the man who 
is doubtful and sceptical about it. And 
if you are to understand his difficulties, 
you must put yourself in his position. 
You must put yourself in his place so far 
as to ask whether there is any meaning in 
life, any good in it all. And you must 
ask the question fairly and squarely, Is 
there any meaning in it all? And to 
answer the question you must turn to 
experience, his experience, your experience, 
the experience of all of us, and you must 
reflect upon it as a whole — that is to say, 
you must become a philosopher. Each 
science tells us about some particular set of 
things; but when every science has done 
so, the question still remains, "What 
does it all mean? What does it all come 



Philosophy and Science ^ 5) 

to?" And any attempt to answer these 
questions is a philosophy. It is with 
the whole of experience that philosophy 
attempts to deal. Philosophy is the 
attempt to deal with the whole, and with 
our experience as a whole. 

It is from experience we have to start, 
and to experience that we have to return. 
We start, and must start, from it, because 
we have nothing else we can start from. 
We reflect upon it — and the reflection 
upon it is philosophy — in the hope that 
having done so we may understand it 
rather better when we have thought it 
over. If that should be the fortunate 
result, then we shall find that we under- 
stand our experience better than we did, 
and that there is more in it than we 
thought at first, and even that it is 
in some respects really different from 
what at first we took it to be. 

Of course there is also the possibility — 
even if it be but a bare possibility — that 
the more we reflect upon experience, the 
more difficult it will be to discover any 



6 Philosophy 

meaning in it, or to make any sense out 
of it. And if we finally come to the con- 
clusion that there is no meaning in the 
world, or none discoverable by us, the 
conclusion will still be a philosophical 
conclusion, because it is the conclusion 
to which we are brought by reflection 
upon experience, but it will be a sceptical 
philosophy. 

In philosophy, as in other departments 
of inquiry, scepticism is the revolt against 
dogmatism; that is to say, philosophical 
scepticism, or scepticism in philosophy, 
is the revolt against the notion that there 
are some conclusions which we may not 
question, but must accept without in- 
quiry or reason. But it is the very 
breath and being of philosophy that 
it should at all times be ready to recon- 
sider its conclusions in the light of new 
evidence and fresh facts. Only by doing 
so can philosophy either grow or live at 
all. The dogmatism which forbids it to 
readjust itself to the growth of know- 
ledge is a dead hand laid upon philosophy 



Philosophy and Science 7 

and fatal to it. So far, then, as sceptic- 
ism is a revolt against dogmatism and 
destructive of it, it is an essential con- 
dition of the growth of philosophy. 

But destruction, necessary though it 
often is, in philosophy as elsewhere, is not 
construction. It may be necessary to 
pull down an old building before we can 
build a new one on the site. But if we 
destroy, it is only in order that we may 
reconstruct. And that is why scepticism 
never in the course of philosophy has been, 
and never in the course of things can be, 
final. But that is just the important 
fact which is overlooked by those who 
consider that scepticism is the last word 
in philosophy. The truth is that philo- 
sophy is a living, growing study; and 
that, so long as it lives and grows, the last 
word has not yet been said. 

The reason why philosophy is a 
living, growing, department of inquiry 
and thought, is, as has already been said, 
that it is with experience that philosophy 
has to do: it is from experience that 



8 Philosophy 

philosophy has to start. Philosophy is 
reflection upon experience and the things 
experienced; and it is on the whole of 
experience that it must be based, if it 
is to have any value. But experience 
is continually increasing; the world is 
growing older and riper in experience 
every day. That is to say, the whole 
of experience never is or can be before us. 
Finality in philosophy, therefore, is for 
ever beyond our reach, if by finality 
we imagine, with the dogmatist, that it 
is possible to say to the free spirit of 
philosophy, "Thus far shalt thou go, and 
no further. " Philosophy, therefore, can 
never recognise finality in this shape, 
but must ever pass forwards and on- 
wards. We may take stock of our experi- 
ence and its results up to the moment 
when we take stock of it; we may even 
form some notion of whether the business 
is going up or down. But the business 
of experience is a going concern; we are 
acquiring experience every day, and we 
do not know how it will stand a year or 



Philosophy and Science 9 

a century hence. To say or imagine 
that we do know is simply the dogmatism 
which is fatal to the development of 
philosophy. What we can do is to form 
some notion of how it is going. We can 
say how things look now. To say how 
they will look a century hence is simply 
dogmatism, and simple folly. The philo- 
sophy of a century hence must do that. 
What we have to start from is experience 
as far as it has already gone. That is 
the experience which philosophy has to 
reflect upon, and about which it has to 
inquire whether it has any meaning, 
and what is the good of it all. 

But if we say this, perhaps we shall be 
understood to mean that philosophy, 
being concerned with experience, is con- 
cerned only with what is past. That 
however would be to misunderstand us. 
As philosophers we are not concerned with 
the past, or rather are not concerned to 
write a history of the things that are past 
and done for. With the past we are 
only concerned so far as it is related to the 



io Philosophy 

present and the future. If experience 
has any meaning, if any meaning runs 
through it, then that meaning has run 
through all the successive moments of the 
past, or has been displayed in them, and 
has been displayed as binding them 
together into one whole. Those suc- 
cessive moments of the past were each of 
them at one time future, then present, 
and then past. Now, we look back upon 
them and see them forming one whole — a 
whole of which we have had and still have 
experience. In the same way, the suc- 
cessive moments, which are not yet past, 
but are running by us now, are each of 
them in turn first future, then present, 
and then past. And if we look upon 
them, and reflect, we shall see that they, 
too, are forming one whole; the future 
moment, ere I can get the words out of 
my mouth, has become present and has 
fallen back into the past. But if the past 
and future moments are thus related, 
if they are thus indeed inseparable, then 
they form one whole. We may, indeed, 



Philosophy and Science n 

distinguish one moment from another, but 
we cannot separate them, just as we can 
distinguish the sides of a straight line, 
though we cannot put one side of the line 
here and the other somewhere else. The 
past moment and the future are, like the 
sides of the line, related and inseparable: 
they are related in the present, when 
we are continually passing through the 
one into the other; and they are, though 
distinguishable, inseparable, because they 
are parts of one whole. That, then, is the 
nature of our experience and of its suc- 
cessive moments, which we may dis- 
tinguish, but cannot possibly separate, 
from one another. Experience is a whole, 
and it is that whole which philosophy has 
to contemplate and on which it reflects. 
But to say that experience is a whole 
is to make a statement which is dogmatic; 
and which, being dogmatic, necessarily 
provokes scepticism — that is to say, 
invites inquiry and requires explanation. 
To say that experience is a whole is to 
make a statement which especially re- 



12 Philosophy 

quires explanation, because, as we have 
already seen, philosophy — that is to say, 
the explanation of experience — never can 
be final, for the simple rea^pn that 
experience itself is continually increasing: 
it never is, but always is to be, completed. 
If, then, experience never is complete, if 
philosophy accordingly never can be 
final, how, the sceptical philosopher may 
inquire, how can experience ever be a 
whole? 

The difficulty thus raised can be met to 
some extent by means of an analogy. 
Thus, a circle, for instance, is a whole. 
Yet we can understand what is meant 
if any one speaks of an expanding circle. 
Experience, on this analogy, may be 
spoken of as a circle continually ex- 
panding. The analogy, however, is ob- 
viously imperfect, because knowledge not 
only increases in extent and in amount, 
but grows richer and more diversified 
in its quality and content. We may then, 
perhaps, find a closer analogy, if we com- 
pare experience to an organism. A living 



Philosophy and Science 13 

organism is a whole, having its parts, 
each one of which is different from every 
other, and no one of which can live apart 
from the others. And yet the organism, 
though it is a whole, and because it is a 
living organism, is continually growing. 
At no moment in the process of its growth 
has the organism attained its final shape. 
And at no moment in its growth has 
experience, either, attained finality; yet 
at every moment it is a whole, even 
though it has the capacity always of 
further growth. 

We may then fairly say there is nothing 
unreasonable in supposing that experi- 
ence may be a whole and a growing whole ; 
and that though it grows, or rather 
because it grows, it has not attained 
finality. But though there seems to be 
nothing unreasonable in supposing, to 
start with, that experience may form a 
whole, still we can put it forward only as 
a supposition or hypothesis. To put it 
forward as a fact would be to commit 
the error of dogmatising. We should 



14 Philosophy 

be forgetting the very point from which 
we started in this lecture. We started 
with the question which some men 
ask about life and experience, "What 
does it all mean? What is the good of 
it all?" And that is precisely the ques- 
tion which philosophy is continually 
attempting to answer. We must assume 
either that there is an answer to it, or 
that there is not. And whether we 
assume, to begin with, that there is or is 
not an answer, we have in the end to 
show that our assumption fits in with the 
facts. We may, indeed, assume that 
there is an answer, and we may put 
forward what we consider to be the 
answer. If we do, then it is the business 
of other philosophers to show how far 
the answer we give fails to be satisfactory; 
and then it becomes our business to re- 
shape the answer so that it will fit the 
facts. And this process goes on and 
will go on, just so long as fresh facts 
turn up, or so long as our answers fail 
to account for all the old facts. 



Philosophy and Science 15 

Now, this, which is the process of 
philosophy, is, of course, the process of 
science also. Science, like philosophy, 
has continually to re-shape itself in order 
to find place — and to find the proper 
place — for all the facts. That is the way, 
and the only way, in which either science 
or philosophy can advance. 

And here the question may reasonably 
be asked, since we have science, What is 
the need or the use of philosophy? What 
is philosophy, anyhow? Well, I repeat, 
philosophy is the attempt to answer 
the question which some men ask about 
life and experience, "What does it all 
mean? What is the good of it all?" 
Now, there are many sciences — mathe- 
matics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, 
biology, physiology, geology, and hosts of 
others — but not one of them even asks, 
much less answers, the question which is 
the most interesting question of all — ■ 
What does our experience come to? 
What does it all mean? What is the good 
of it all? It is philosophy and philosophy 



16 Philosophy 

alone which puts that question and 
attempts to answer it. 

Each of the particular sciences deals 
with one particular set of facts. Philo- 
sophy, on the other hand, is the attempt 
to contemplate all experience and all 
being, not to deal with any one particular 
set of facts but to regard them as forming 
one whole, and to ask what is the meaning 
of the whole. No science does that. No 
science faces all the facts. In war suc- 
cessful strategy often consists in taking 
the enemy in detail and in beating one 
division of the hostile army after the 
other. And that is the kind of strategy 
that science employs. Instead of attack- 
ing the problems presented by nature all 
at once, science takes the problems singly 
and deals with them one at a time. That 
is why there are so many sciences; each 
is told off to do its special work and deal 
with its own particular problems. Each, 
therefore, can give us information about 
its own particular department of know- 
ledge, while none can tell us anything 



Philosophy and Science 17 

about the work of any other science. 
Still less can any one science undertake 
to sum up all the work of all the other 
sciences. 

As I have said, no science faces all the 
facts. The strategy of science — the uni- 
form method of all the sciences — con- 
sists in dividing the enemy's forces, as it 
were, and so beating them in detail. 
Every object has a host of various quali- 
ties, and each of those qualities is dealt 
with separately by a separate science — its 
colour by optics, its weight by physics, 
its chemical constitution by chemistry, 
its organism by physiology, and so on. 
Of course, the colour of a thing does not 
exist separately from the thing; nor can 
you take the weight out of a thing, and 
carry off the weight into one room whilst 
you leave the thing without any weight in 
the other. All you can really do is to 
concentrate your attention on one of 
the many qualities that a thing possesses, 
and dismiss from attention all the other 
qualities. And when we do this, we are 



1 8 Philosophy 

said to abstract that particular quality 
from the thing; and the quality itself is 
called an abstraction. These qualities— 
these abstract qualities — can be studied 
by themselves in one way only, and 
that is by pretending that they exist 
by themselves. And the study of such 
abstractions is what is called science. 

All sciences are abstract sciences. No 
one of them deals with things as w r holes; 
every science deals with some one quality 
of things — that is to say, with some 
abstraction. Every science studies some 
one aspect of reality separately; no one 
science studies all the aspects of reality 
together. And yet it is very necessary 
that all the aspects of reality — that is to 
say, the whole of our experience should 
be studied together, because the question 
will arise, What does it all come to? 
What is the meaning of it all? And that 
is just the question which no science 
undertakes to answer. And the reason 
why no science even attempts to answer 
the question is that every science is 



Philosophy and Science 19 

abstract; every science deals with this 
or that abstract quality of things. No 
one science deals with all the qualities of 
any single thing. Much less does any 
science deal with all things together, and 
ask, What do they all come to? What 
is the meaning of them as a whole? 

Science, then, is abstract and studies 
abstractions, not things as wholes. It 
takes things to pieces, as it were, and 
studies the pieces separately. Or rather 
it pretends to take them to pieces, and to 
take the weight of a thing, or the colour 
of a thing, and to study these abstrac- 
tions. But of course it is impossible to 
separate the weight from a material 
thing, just as it is impossible for the thing 
to exist without weight. And science 
does not imagine that a material thing can 
exist without weight, or that weight exists 
apart from material things. Science 
knows that these are abstractions, and 
that the abstract sciences deal with 
abstractions and not with wholes. Sci- 
ence then is abstract in this way. 



20 Philosophy 

But science is doubly abstract, for it is 
abstract in another way also. The man 
of science concentrates his attention on 
some one of the many qualities that a 
thing possesses, and studies it, and gains 
some knowledge of it. The thing could 
not be studied unless it were there; nor 
could it be studied unless the student were 
there to study it and gain some knowledge 
about it. If the thing did not exist it 
could not be known to the student; and 
neither could it be known to the student 
if the student did not exist. Both must 
be there — the student and the thing. 
But though both must be there, science 
does not attend to both. The thing has 
many qualities — weight, size, colour, and 
so on — but any particular science attends 
to only one particular quality, and dis- 
misses the other qualities from attention. 
So, too, though both the student and the 
thing studied must be present, if any 
scientific knowledge of the thing is to be 
attained, science attends only to the thing 
studied, and pays no attention to the 



Philosophy and Science 21 

student. His hopes and fears, his feelings 
of triumph or of disappointment, as his 
experiment succeeds or fails, matter no 
more to science than the clothes he wears 
or the cut of his hair. Science is con- 
cerned only with the thing — or rather 
the abstraction — studied, not with the 
student or his indigestion or the dirtiness 
of his hands. All those things — real 
though they may be — science dismisses 
from attention. It is not the student 
that science is attending to or cares about, 
but the experiment. The student may be 
dismissed from attention, just as all the 
other qualities of the thing, except the 
one quality that is under examination, 
may be dismissed. And science does 
dismiss the student from attention. 

Hence it is that science is doubly 
abstract. It is abstract in the first place 
because it dismisses from attention all 
qualities except the one under investiga- 
tion, and pretends that that one alone 
exists ; and it is abstract in the next place 
because it dismisses the student from 



22 Philosophy 

attention and pretends that the thing 
under investigation alone exists. 

Now, so long as every one remembers 
that the thing under investigation does 
not exist by itself, and could not be under 
investigation and could not be known, 
unless there were some one there by whom 
it was investigated and to whom it was 
known, so long no harm is done. But 
this simple fact is not always remembered; 
it is sometimes forgotten, and then those 
who forget it imagine that the thing 
under investigation can exist all by itself. 
Yet the notion that the thing exists 
all by itself is an abstraction of just the 
same kind as the notion that weight can 
exist by itself apart from material things, 
or matter exist without weight. We 
never find matter apart from weight, 
or weight apart from matter. And we 
never find ourselves apart from every- 
thing we know. Neither do we ever 
find the things we know apart from 
ourselves. How can we? If we find 
them, we know them; and if we find and 



Philosophy and Science 23 

know them, we of course must be there 
and they, too, must be there. We can 
pretend, by abstraction, that they alone 
are there; we can concentrate our atten- 
tion upon our work or upon some scene 
of beauty or of horror, and become so 
absorbed in it as to forget ourselves and 
our own existence. But we are there 
all the same. If we forget our own 
existence, we must be there to do so. 

Just then as weight by itself is an 
abstraction, and not a reality, so, too, 
things by themselves are an abstraction 
and not a reality. Weight is never found 
in the abstract, but always in combi- 
nation with many other qualities. And 
so, too, things are never found in the 
abstract and by themselves; they are 
always found by somebody — or else they 
are not found at all. We never find 
the things we know, apart from our- 
selves. Neither do we ever find our- 
selves apart from all that we know. 

We can think of ourselves apart from 
things, just as we can think of things 



24 Philosophy 

apart from ourselves. But in both cases 
we are thinking of abstractions and not of 
realities. Things apart from us are un- 
real abstractions; and we, apart from 
things, are equally abstract and unreal. 

No one would maintain that the inside 
of a curve could be found without the 
outside, or could exist without it. You 
can, of course, concentrate your atten- 
tion on what is inside and dismiss what 
is outside from attention. But the one 
side cannot exist without the other; they 
cannot be divorced. And science, which 
deals with one quality apart from others, 
or things apart from the mind that 
studies them, does not really divorce 
them; it simply considers the inside of 
the curve by itself or the outside by itself. 
It cannot separate them, for the simple 
reason that they are inseparable. 

But though the inside and the outside 
of a curve cannot be separated, they are 
quite distinguishable, and, in a way, 
opposed to each other. So, too, the 
person or subject who attends to some- 



Philosophy and Science 25 

thing is quite distinguishable from the 
object to which he attends, and is, in a 
way, opposed to it. 

Perhaps, however, you will feel that the 
subject or person who attends to things is 
not always attending to the same thing. 
And that is undeniable. But if you are 
not attending to one thing, you are to 
another; so long as you are conscious at 
all, you are conscious of something. You 
are always aware of some object or other. 
You — the subject — can't get on without 
some object. You are, let us say, the 
outside of the curve. Well ! you can't get 
on without an inside. 

But what about things? Well! are 
they things that anybody knows, or 
things that nobody knows? If they are 
things nobody knows, no one need pay 
any attention to them — indeed, nobody 
can. And if they are things that are 
known, why! then they are objects of 
attention, the inside of that curve of 
which the mind is the outside — or, if 
you like it better, they are the outside of 



26 Philosophy 

that curve of which the mind is the 
inside. 

But the root of the whole matter and 
the key to all philosophy is that the two 
sides of the curve, though distinguish- 
able, are inseparable. Subject and object 
cannot be divorced. We may consider 
the one apart from the other. But if we 
do so, we are considering an abstraction 
and not a reality. We may consider 
matter apart from mind, or mind apart 
from matter; we may consider the subject 
apart from the object, or the object 
apart from the subject. But in either 
case we are starting from an abstraction 
and not from a reality. 

We may put our backs to the inside of 
the curve and walk away from it, or we 
may put our backs to the outside of the 
curve and walk away in the opposite 
direction. And, whichever we do, the 
further we go, the further away we get 
from reality. On one side of the curve 
lies matter and the world of material 
objects; on the other lies mind and its 



Philosophy and Science 27 

various manifestations. Whether we go 
forward into the world of material objects 
or into, the sphere of mind and its mani- 
festations, we are plunging deeper and 
deeper into a collection of abstractions, 
and getting further and further away 
from reality. 

If we go in the one direction we find 
nothing but matter and motion; and 
then we shall be tempted to proclaim 
that there is no reality but matter in 
motion. If we go in the other direction 
we shall find nothing but mental states 
and mental processes; and then we shall 
be tempted to proclaim that there is no 
such thing as matter, but only mental 
processes and mental states. But the 
truth is that matter apart from mind, 
or mind apart from objects, is a mere 
abstraction, an unreality. This I shall 
dwell on at greater length in the next 
chapter. For the moment I wish to 
consider an argument that may already 
have suggested itself to your minds. 

It is this. Granted, you may say, 



28 Philosophy 

that every science deals with abstractions, 
such as the weight of things, or colour, 
or number; surely that is the proper 
method of procedure: let us attack the 
various problems in detail first, and 
afterwards let us piece our results to- 
gether. The only way, you may say, in 
which to see how anything is made is to 
take it to pieces, and then to put it 
together again. 

Now, this might be a very admirable 
method of procedure, if it were possible 
with the things of nature as it is with the 
things made by man. But it is not 
possible. A watch that man has made, 
man can take to pieces and put together 
again. An egg that a hen has laid may 
be taken to pieces or analysed by man — 
but he can't put it together again. 

And there are some things that man 
cannot take to pieces ; he cannot take one 
side of a curve and put it down here, and 
take the other side of a curve and put 
it down there. He cannot separate him- 
self from all the things that he knows and 



Philosophy and Science 29 

put them down by themselves in one place 
and himself without any of them in an- 
other. Still less — even if he could — 
would it be possible to bring them to- 
gether again. Yet that is precisely what 
was suggested just now as the proper 
method of procedure. It was in effect 
suggested that man and the things he 
knows, or the subject and the object, are, 
as it were, the two ends of a stick; and 
that, if you want to separate them and 
study them apart from each other, you 
have only got to cut the stick in two, 
and there you are. 

But you cannot separate the subject 
and the object in that way, just as you 
cannot cut the end off a stick. Perhaps, 
however, as some persons think that the 
subject can be separated from the object, 
you think you can cut the end off a stick. 
There is the stick, with two ends, Are 
you quite so sure that you can cut one 
end off? Cut a piece off, and then 
tell me how many ends the stick has ! Of 
course it still has two, and always will 



30 Philosophy 

have two, however many pieces you chop 
off. And so, too, you never can chop off 
the object from the subject. Every stick 
has two ends all the time. And they 
cannot be separated, any more than the 
two sides of a curve can; or than sub- 
ject and object — you and all that you 
know — can be separated. 

And now to sum up this chapter. 

Philosophy consists in reflecting upon 
experience for the purpose of discovering 
whether experience, as a whole, has any 
meaning; and, if so, what meaning. But 
experience is continually increasing; and, 
as experience never ceases, philosophy 
never comes to an end; it never can be 
final. The dogmatist, however, thinks 
that his explanation of the world and life 
is final; while the sceptic in philosophy 
thinks that no explanation whatever will 
hold water; he thinks that experience has 
no meaning whatever. Both the dog- 
matist and the sceptic, however, are 
wrong ; the dogmatist is wrong in thinking 
that any explanation is final; the sceptic 



Philosophy and Science 31 

is wrong in denying that experience is a 
whole. The sceptic says that experience 
cannot be a whole because it is continually 
increasing. And he is wrong in saying 
so, because a circle, for instance, is a 
whole, and yet it may expand and increase 
continually without ceasing to be a circle 
and a whole. We shall therefore hold 
that experience is a whole. But we shall 
not lay it down dogmatically that experi- 
ence is a whole ; we shall always recognise 
that this is only a supposition or hy- 
pothesis that we put forward; and that 
we have perpetually to inquire whether 
it does really explain all the facts. In 
this respect philosophy is like science ; for 
science also makes hypotheses and is 
constantly modifying them so that they 
may fit all the facts. But though philo- 
sophy and science both make hypotheses 
and then modify them to suit the facts — 
though philosophy and science are alike 
in this respect — yet there is a great 
difference between them. The difference 
is this: Each science deals with one par- 



32 Philosophy 

ticular set of facts and no one science deals 
with all the facts of experience, whereas 
it is with all the facts and with experience 
as a whole that philosophy deals; for the 
object and purpose of philosophy is to 
inquire, What does all our experience 
come to — What is the meaning of it all? 
That is the difference between science 
and philosophy: philosophy deals with 
experience as a whole — with life as it is 
lived. Science deals with abstractions: 
it treats of the movements of the stars, 
or of the weight or the colour or the 
numerical relations of things. And these 
are all abstractions. Again, the things 
studied by science are studied by some- 
body and known to somebody ; they could 
not be known unless they were known by 
someone. But this fact is set aside by 
science. Science abstracts the things 
known, and treats them as though they 
existed without being known. But the 
truth is that knowledge and existence are 
like the two sides of a curve ; the two sides 
are different in a way, and yet they are 



Philosophy and Science 33 

inseparable. Now, it is from that fact 
that we ought to start, that the curve 
has two sides. But some people think 
that we need only attend to one of the 
two sides, to the side on which matter is, 
or to the side on which mind is. They 
even think we can deny the existence 
of the other side. It seems rather strange 
to suppose that a curve has only one side, 
or that a stick has only one end; but we 
must inquire what grounds there are for 
thinking so. And in the next chapter 
we will inquire. 
3 



CHAPTER II 

MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM 

I said in the last chapter that our experi- 
ence of life is sometimes bitter — so bitter 
that we cannot help asking, What does it 
all mean? What is the good of it all? 
And I pointed out that philosophy is just 
the attempt to answer these questions. 
Philosophy takes experience, all together, 
as a whole, and asks what it all means. 
Further, I argued that there can be no 
experience, except where there is some 
one who experiences something. The 
some one and the something are, as it 
were, the two sides of a curve. On the 
inside of the curve is the internal world 
of our thoughts and feelings, sensations 
and ideas, our pleasures and pains; on the 
outside of the curve is the external world 
of moving, material things. On the 

34 



Materialism and Idealism 35 

inside of the curve is mind, on the out- 
side is matter. On the one side is the 
subject; on the other, the object, of 
experience. 

Now, constructive philosophers assume 
that experience is really, if we could only 
see it properly, a whole, and an intelligi- 
ble whole, with some good in it; and they 
try to show that such is the nature of ex- 
perience. Destructive philosophers, how- 
ever, that is to say, sceptical philosophers, 
try to show that no such explanation 
does explain all the facts in an intelligible 
manner for the simple reason that, as 
it seems to them, the facts are unintel- 
ligible. But constructive philosophers, 
though they agree that experience is a 
whole, and that the business of philosophy 
is to try to understand it, are by no means 
agreed as to what it is that we have 
experience of. Some think that moving 
material things, outside us, are the only 
realities of which we have experience. 
Others think that the only things we 
know for certain are our own sensations. 



36 Philosophy 

Let us then examine each of these two 
views ; and let us begin with the one which 
asserts that the outside of the curve, the 
external world of matter, and material, 
moving things, the objects of which we 
have experience, alone are real. With 
this view we all must have a certain 
sympathy. At any rate it is a view 
which is easily understood. If we are 
asked what reality is, we may not be 
able to say offhand; but we can easily 
point to real things. The walls which we 
see, the desk which we touch, the chair on 
which we sit, and the ground on which it 
rests are all real things. And they are all 
material; they are all matter in one form 
or another. Everything that we can see, 
touch, hear, smell, and taste is real and 
material. The earth on which we live 
and the countless stars around it are all 
real and all of them are matter. 

Further we know from personal obser- 
vation that many of these material things 
move; and science tells us that every one 
of these things is made up of molecules, 



Materialism and Idealism 37 

which are all of them vibrating with 
great rapidity, though the molecules are 
so infinitely small that we cannot see or 
feel their vibration and motion. Thus of 
every object we perceive or can perceive, 
whether by the senses or by means of the 
scientific imagination, of every object and 
of the whole objective world we can say 
that it is matter in motion. 

Not only can we say of every object and 
of the whole objective world — of all on 
the outside of the curve — that it is matter 
in motion, but, thanks to the labours 
of science, we even know many of the 
laws according to which matter moves. 

First of all there is what is called the 
Law of Universal Causation — that is, the 
great law that nothing whatever can 
happen without a cause. The value of 
this law for the purposes of science is 
immense, for, even when we do not know 
what is the cause of a thing in which 
we are for any reason interested, we may 
be sure that it must have a cause; and 
so long as we know that, we can go on 



38 Philosophy 

trying to find it out, until we do find it 
out. That is the faith which supports the 
men of science in their long labours ; they 
know there is a cause for everything 
that happens, however long and arduous 
the search for it may be. 

Next, there is another great law which 
is called the Law of the Uniformity of 
Nature. Not only must everything have 
a cause, as the Law of Universal Cau- 
sation affirms, but a cause must always- — 
if not counteracted by some other cause- 
have its effect ; and that is the Law of the 
Uniformity of Nature; the same cause 
always has, or tends to have, the same 
effect. 

Indeed, the Law of the Uniformity of 
Nature goes further, for it assumes that 
the same causes are uniformly at work. 
It is because the same causes are uni- 
formly and always at work that we get 
to know how they work. The Law of 
Universal Causation would not be of 
much use to us, if no cause ever operated 
more than once, and if at every moment 



Materialism and Idealism 39 

some new cause were at work that had 
never acted before, and never would act 
again. In such a case the Law of Univer- 
sal Causation might still be true, it might 
still be true that everything had a cause; 
but if at every moment some new cause 
came into operation that we had never 
come across before, there would be no 
Uniformity in Nature, and we could never 
possibly know what to expect next. 

But if these laws of the Uniformity of 
Nature and of Universal Causation are 
true, we can know, or can learn, not only 
the effects of causes which are at work, 
but we can discover also the causes of the 
things we see around us. We can see, 
or science can see and tell us, how the 
world around us has come to be what it 
is. And that is precisely what the theory 
of Evolution does undertake to tell us. 
It shows us how the various species of 
animals and plants have come to be what 
they are; it traces them back to the 
earliest speck of protoplasm. It shows 
how the earth at one time was a molten 



40 Philosophy 

mass — as indeed, except for a thin crust 
on its surface, it is now. It shows how 
at a still earlier period the whole of what 
is now the solar system was a nebulous 
vapour. But nebulous though it was, 
the vapour was then, as the earth is now, 
matter in motion. 

And not only does the theory of Evo- 
lution tell us what has been, and how it 
has come to be what it is ; not only does it 
tell us the causes of all that we see around 
us, but it also foretells the effect of the 
causes at work. The earth and the sun 
must eventually lose all their heat, for 
their heat is radiating away into space 
as hard as it can; the earth will eventu- 
ally become uninhabitable, as the moon is 
now, for it will freeze down and at last it 
will have neither heat nor light to give 
out, but will become like one of the other 
black invisible bodies of matter in motion 
which are moving about in space. 

All this follows from the Law of the 
Uniformity of Nature. The same causes 
are always at work, and all tend to 



Materialism and Idealism 41 

produce the same results. There is no 
freedom in nature, no variety, no spon- 
taneity; everything is according to law — 
the Laws of Nature. There is only one 
course which events can follow — that 
which is determined for them by the 
laws of Causation and the Uniformity of 
Nature. If only we knew all the causes 
at work now and could understand the 
way in which they worked, and worked in 
with one another, we could foretell and 
foresee with absolute certainty every- 
thing that is to happen. All that has 
happened, and all that will happen, is 
fixed absolutely and irrevocably. No- 
thing can alter it. It is all predeter- 
mined, and we cannot modify or change 
it by one hair's breadth. We might as 
well be non-existent, for anything we can 
do to change it. 

And that brings us round to the funda- 
mental question, with which we started 
in the first chapter, What is the good of it 
all? We said that philosophy is the 
attempt to answer, or at any rate to see if 



42 Philosophy 

there is any answer to the questions which 
we cannot help asking — What does it all 
mean? What is the good of it all? 
Well, then, how far does the philosophy, 
which I have been expounding to you 
for the last few minutes, seem to you to 
answer those questions? It started, you 
will remember, from the assumption that 
the only real things are things that we 
can see and touch — that is to say, that 
the only reality is matter in motion — 
that the things on the outside of the curve 
are real, and that the things on the inside, 
our sensations and thoughts and feelings, 
are not. If this assumption leads to con- 
clusions which are felt to be satisfactory, 
we shall accept the conclusions. If not, 
we will try some other assumption. But, 
at the present, what I wish to ask you is 
whether the conclusions are satisfactory. 
Starting from experience we asked, 
What does it all mean? What is the 
good of it all? We are told that the 
only reality we find in our experience is 
matter in motion; and consequently that 



Materialism and Idealism 43 

the only meaning, in all that we do and 
suffer and go through, is that particles 
of matter move about according to the 
Laws of Universal Causation and the 
Uniformity of Nature. That is the only 
lesson there is to be learnt ! 

It may be one lesson that is to be 
learnt, but it certainly is not the only 
one; nor is it the most important or the 
most interesting one. It may be true 
that particles of matter are continually 
in motion; but there are many other 
truths which are of much higher value. 
The experience that each one of us has 
gone through means much more than 
that. What does all our experience mean? 
It is absurd to say that its only meaning 
is that particles of matter move about. 
That may be true, but it is not the whole 
truth or the fundamental truth. It is not 
a satisfactory explanation of experience 
— indeed, it is not an explanation at all. 
If experience is to be explained, it is 
necessary to show that it has some good 
end. If it has no good end, it is no good; 



44 Philosophy 

and there was no good in our going 
through it. An explanation of our experi- 
ence, if it is to be a satisfactory explana- 
tion, must explain what is the good of it. 
And what conceivable good is there in 
particles of matter being moved about? 
The philosophy then — the material- 
istic philosophy — which endeavours to 
explain the whole of our experience by 
saying that there is nothing in it but 
matter in motion, that what our experi- 
ence all comes to is that there is no reality 
but matter in motion, proves to be an 
unsatisfactory explanation, because it 
can give no answer to the very natural 
question, Then what is the good of it all? 
But if Materialism is reduced to admit 
that it cannot see or say what good there 
is in it all, it may be that Materialism is 
based upon an assumption which is false. 
Now, the assumption on which Material- 
ism is based is a double or twofold 
assumption. It is the assumption, first, 
that the material things which we see, 
feel, and touch, and hear are real; and 



Materialism and Idealism 45 

next, that those material things are the 
only reality of which we have experience. 
At first sight it may seem, however, 
that to say that the material things 
around us are real is not an assumption. 
It may seem to you that it is not an 
assumption at all, but a simple fact, that 
the material things around us — the walls 
and the ground, the tables and chairs, 
and so on — are real. We will, there- 
fore, for the present not argue that point, 
though we may have to come back to it 
hereafter. 

But what about the other point, that 
the material things around us are the 
only real things that there are? That 
plainly is an assumption ; there may quite 
possibly, and quite conceivably be, for 
anything we know, other things that are 
real and yet are not material things. 
Your thoughts, feelings, ideas, sensations, 
are quite real, but you cannot see or touch 
a thought. You may talk of an idea as 
a great idea, yet you cannot measure 
it with a tape. You may speak of weighty 



46 Philosophy 

arguments, yet you cannot really put 
them on a pair of scales and weigh them. 
Your thoughts and ideas are quite real, 
though you cannot measure them with a 
yard-measure, or touch them with your 
fingers. They are quite real though they 
are not material things. 

Thus, though it may be true that 
material things are real, it is an assump- 
tion that material things are the only 
realities we are aware of. Now, the 
assumptions that we make in the ordinary 
course of life may turn out to be true, or 
they may turn out to be false. When we 
make an assumption we think it may, 
or even that it will probably, turn out to 
be true, but we don't know that it will. 
It is only experience which will show. 
I assume that my train will be punctual. 
That is an assumption which may turn 
out true or not. Experience alone will 
show whether it is or is not. And the 
assumptions we make in philosophy are 
of just the same kind: when we make 
them, they seem likely to turn out true, 



Materialism and Idealism 47 

but experience alone will show whether 
they prove true. 

Thus in philosophy some of us assume 
that there is a meaning in our experience 
of the world, and that there is some good 
in life. But whether the assumption is 
true or not depends on what experience 
has to say. So, too, in philosophy some 
people assume not only that material 
things are real, but that they are the only 
realities. Whether this assumption will 
explain all the facts is a question which 
can be tested only by experience. If 
in your experience there are things, such 
as joy and grief, thoughts and ideas, 
which are indubitably real and undoubt- 
edly not material things, then the assump- 
tion, that matter in motion alone exists 
and alone is real, is an assumption which 
does not account for all the facts. And 
in philosophy what we want is an assump- 
tion which will fit in with the whole of our 
experience, and account for it all. 

Now, the theory of Materialism is a 
philosophical theory. That is to say, it 



48 Philosophy- 

is an assumption which is made in the 
belief that all the facts of experience will 
fit into it, when we come to examine 
them. If some of the undoubted facts 
of experience do not fit in with it, then 
it is an assumption which does not 
explain all the facts, and it cannot be 
accepted as the correct explanation of our 
experience. Materialism certainly does 
not account for all the facts. It is an 
obvious fact that it is we who have ex- 
perience. That is just as plain as it is 
that there are things which we experi- 
ence. But Materialism leaves out of 
account us who have the experience, and 
attends only to the things. As I have 
already said, Materialism sees only the 
things on the outside of the curve — the 
world of material objects. It closes its 
eyes to the inside of the curve — our 
thoughts and ideas and sensations and 
pains and joys. 

Not only does Materialism close its 
eyes to them at the start, and say that in 
the beginning there was only matter in 



Materialism and Idealism 49 

motion; but it never accounts for the 
existence of consciousness. Indeed, if it 
were right in its assumption that matter 
alone really exists, the consequences 
would follow that our thoughts and ideas, 
our joy and grief, and our very con- 
sciousness do not exist. But we have no 
doubt about our own consciousness and 
our own existence ; and we see accordingly 
that the assumption on which Material- 
ism is based is a false assumption, for 
it assumes that our feelings and thoughts 
are not real. It is an assumption made 
for the purpose of explaining our experi- 
ence; and it accounts only for one side of 
our experience, viz., the outside of the 
curve, the world of material objects; and 
it leaves, unexplained and unaccounted 
for, the inside of the curve, the thoughts 
and sensations of the subject. 

It is, therefore, not wonderful if other 
philosophers have tried to account for 
what the Materialists have left unex- 
plained. The Materialist placed his back 
to the outside of the curve and walked 



50 Philosophy 

forth into the world of matter and mate- 
rial objects; and the further he advanced 
the further away he got, until he forgot 
and even denied that the curve had an 
inside. The only realities, he declared, 
were the material things, the matter in 
motion on the outside of the curve. But 
since the thoughts and ideas, the griefs 
and the joys that we all have, are un- 
doubtedly real, it was inevitable that 
some philosophers should turn to the 
inside of the curve and seek to find reality 
in its contents. These philosophers place 
their back to the inner side of the curve 
and plunge in that direction in the search 
for reality. And we have now to follow 
them. 

And you will see at once that the fur- 
ther they travel and the deeper they get 
into the inside, the greater is the danger 
that they will forget that the curve has an 
outside, just as the other philosophers, 
the Materialists, forgot that it had an 
inside. However, you are quite sure 
that the material things which you can 



Materialism and Idealism 51 

see, touch, feel, hear, taste, and smell 
are real. There does not seem to you to 
be any supposition or assumption about 
that. It may also be true that your 
sensations and thoughts and feelings are 
real; but you have no doubt that the 
chair on which you sit, the ground on 
which it rests, and the things around you 
are both material and real. 

You have no doubt about the existence 
of matter. You have the evidence of 
your senses to prove that it is there. You 
look at the desk and you have a sen- 
sation of sight. You run your hand 
over it and you have the sensation of 
smoothness. You press your hand on 
it and you have the sensation of resist- 
ance. Or, you have an orange in your 
hand and, when you peel it, you have 
a sensation of smell. When you put 
it to your mouth you have the sen- 
sation of taste. Or, there is a bell in the 
tower and, when the clapper strikes the 
bell, you have the sensation of sound. 
But the sensation of taste, of course, is in 



52 Philosophy 

your mouth: if you had no palate you 
would have no taste. And the sensation 
of smell is in your nostrils : it is not in the 
rose. The sensation of sound which 
arises, when the clapper strikes the bell, 
is in your ears and not in the bell: if 
you were stone deaf, the clapper might 
strike the bell ever so hard and you would 
have no sensation of sound. So the 
sensation of sound is in you; it is not in 
the bell. And the sensation of taste is 
not in the plum-pudding in the shop- 
window: it is, or will be, in you. And 
so, too, if nobody smelt the rose, there 
would be no sensation of smell. 

Evidently, therefore, the sensation you 
have when you smell the rose is not the 
same thing as the rose. And the sen- 
sation you have when the bell is rung is 
not the same thing as the bell. Nor is the 
taste of the apple the same thing as the 
apple. The sensations of taste and smell 
and sound, when you have them, are 
in you, and not in the apple or orange 
or bell. 



Materialism and Idealism 53 

But you can see the apple or the orange, 
when it is before you. And since you can 
see it you know that it is there, a real, 
material thing: seeing is believing. But 
you will admit that what you mean by 
seeing a thing is that you have a sen- 
sation of sight. And evidently the sen- 
sation of sight is in you and not in the 
thing. So the sensation of sight is just 
like the sensations of sound and smell 
and taste: they are all in you and not in 
the things. 

But you may say, "The apple is here in 
my hand; I can feel it, smooth and hard." 
Yes! you can feel it. But what does that 
mean? It means that you have a feeling 
— the feeling of smoothness or the feeling 
of firmness and resistance. You have 
the feeling or sensation, just as you had 
the sensation of smell or of sound or of 
taste or of sight. And like those sen- 
sations, the sensation of smoothness or 
resistance is in you, not in the things. 
All the sensations you have are, without 
exception, in you. 



54 Philosophy 

But, you will say, "The real material 
things are not in me; they are quite 
separate from me and independent of me 
and my sensations. They are there !" 
Well, then, I want to know, first of all, 
what exactly is there; and, next, whether 
it would matter if it was not there. 

Let us start once more with the orange. 
When you have it in your hand, you 
have sensations of sight, sensations of 
firmness and roughness, of smell and of 
taste. But you say that there is some- 
thing more: there is the matter of which 
it is made. Now what is this "matter"? 
It is not, you say, any of the sensations 
which you have. It is not your tasting, 
smelling, seeing, touching; they are all 
sensations, and matter is something dif- 
ferent from any sensation. Well, then, 
if it is different from any sensation you 
ever had, or ever can have, what is it like? 
what can it be? and how can you know it? 
All that you know about any of the 
things around you, you know by your 
sensations. Go through everything you 



Materialism and Idealism 55 

know about the orange and you will find 
all you know about it is the sensations 
of sweetness and firmness and roughness 
and smoothness, and so on, that you 
have. 

But you will obstinately have it that 
over and above these sensations, or below 
or behind them, there is something more, 
which you call "matter," and that this 
"matter" is quite different from any 
sensation that you have of it. What it is, 
or what it is like, you cannot possibly say. 
And yet you ask me to believe in it. How 
can I? 

If anybody came up to you, for in- 
stance, and told you that there was some- 
thing there which neither he nor you nor 
anyone could see or feel or touch or hear 
or taste or smell, but he was sure it was 
there — what should you think of him? 
Of course you would think that he did 
not know what he was talking about. 
Well, when people talk about "matter," 
are you quite sure that they know what 
they are talking about? 



56 Philosophy 

Anyhow, it is not easy to understand 
exactly what they do mean. Generally, 
they seem to mean, as I said just now, 
that matter is quite different from any 
sensation that anybody ever has of it. 
And then, as we have seen, they cannot 
say what it is. But as they, like you, 
are quite sure that matter does exist, 
would it help to improve things and 
make them a little more intelligible, if, 
instead of saying that matter is quite 
different from any sensation anybody has 
of it, we were to turn it round and say 
just the opposite — that matter and ma- 
terial things are just exactly what we see, 
and nothing more or different? That 
seems to remove all mystery and make 
everything plain. 

But how does the case stand then? 
We have sensations of sight, touch, sound, 
taste, smell; and when we ask "And what 
is matter?" we are now told, matter is 
just those sensations, and nothing more or 
different. But, if that is the case, then 
there are sensations of sight, touch, 



Materialism and Idealism 57 

taste, and so on, but there is nothing more 
than sensations, nothing different from 
them; and, in that case, there is no 
11 matter.' ' 

Once more, then, we are driven to the 
conclusion either that matter does not 
exist, or, at any rate, that it is very diffi- 
cult to understand what is meant by the 
people who say that it does exist. And 
this brings me to the other question I 
raised a minute or two ago: Suppose 
matter did not exist, would it make any 
very great difference? If I have the 
sensations of tasting and eating a meal 
and of feeling refreshed and fit to work 
after it, I am satisfied. Certainly I 
shall not be in the least disturbed by 
discovering matter does not exist, or by 
discovering that those who believe in it 
have to admit that it is something which 
nobody can possibly see or touch or taste 
or hear or smell or feel — that it is in it- 
self something unknown and unknowable. 

Now, I do not suppose that what I 
have said is enough to convince you that 



58 Philosophy 

matter does not exist; but I hope it is 
enough to show you that if anyone asks 
you, "What is matter ?" the question is 
not one which it is easy to answer. 
Matter is not the sensations or feelings 
that you and I have. And if you take 
any object, such as a chair or a table, 
which you are in the habit of calling a 
material thing, and ask yourself what you 
actually know of it, you will find that all 
you can say of it is that you have certain 
sensations of touch and sight, and so on. 
And if that is so, why should you say 
anything more? Why should you say 
that, besides the sensations of touch and 
sight and taste and sound, and so on, 
which you have and which you know, 
there is something else which you don't 
know, and which you call Matter? Why 
not confine yourself to what you do know 
from experience — that is, the fact that 
you have sensations, and that certain 
sensations go together, so that when you 
have a certain sensation of yellowness 
and roundness, you know that you can 



Materialism and Idealism 59 

have a certain sensation of taste? The 
orange will taste and smell exactly the 
same, whether you believe that over and 
above all your sensations there is some 
mysterious thing which you call Matter, 
or whether you don't. 

Now, there are some philosophers who 
say that we know we have sensations 
and that we don't know that there is any- 
thing else. And as they maintain that 
sensations are the only reality, they are 
called Sensationalists or the Sensational 
philosophers. Or sometimes, because 
they do not believe in Matter, but do 
say that we have sensations and ideas, 
they are called Idealists. They are, of 
course, altogether opposed to the Ma- 
terialists. 

The Materialists, you will remember, 
assume that there is matter, matter in 
motion; and that there is nothing else. 
The Sensation philosophers assume that 
there are sensations, and that there is 
nothing else. And why do they make 
these assumptions? For the simple 



60 Philosophy 

reason that, when we reflect upon our 
experience of the world and life, we want 
to know what it all comes to, what it 
all means, what is the good of it all. 

It is clear that, when we ask ourselves 
what our experience means, and what it 
all comes to, we do not know what it all 
means, or what it all comes to. And it is 
because we don't know, that we have to 
make suppositions and frame hypotheses. 
And when we have framed a hypothesis, 
or made an assumption, we have to see 
whether it does what it is intended to do, 
that is to say, whether it does really ex- 
plain our experience, and show us what 
it all comes to. 

The assumption or supposition which 
the Materialist makes is that matter, 
matter in motion, alone exists. And it is 
clear that that supposition will not 
explain all our experience, because we 
certainly have experience of our own 
thoughts and feelings, and they certainly 
are not material things; they cannot be 
weighed in a pair of scales or measured by 



Materialism and Idealism 61 

a foot-rule. So the supposition of the 
Materialist, that matter alone exists, will 
not explain all our experience. Even if 
matter exists and is real, our own thoughts 
and feelings and sensations and ideas 
are real also. 

Accordingly, other philosophers, the 
Sensationalists or Idealists, put forward 
another supposition or assumption. They 
say, let us suppose that sensations or ideas 
exist; and — what is more — they say, let 
us suppose that sensations or ideas alone 
exist — that there are no material things, 
or matter. The question then is whether 
these suppositions, which the Sensational- 
ist invites us to make, will explain our 
experience and enable us to understand 
what it all comes to. For if they will not, 
we shall have to abandon them and seek 
for some other supposition which will 
explain our experience as a whole and 
show us what it all comes to. 

Now, every curve has both an inside 
and an outside; and neither can exist 
without the other. You can look at the 



62 Philosophy 

one side and forget the other; but it is 
there all the same. And so, too, in 
experience, there is the person who has 
the experience, and there is the experience 
which he has. You may look at the one 
and forget the other; but it is there 
all the same. And Materialism looks 
at the one side of the curve, and sees 
the world of material things — and seeing 
them, it forgets the other side of the curve 
altogether. The supposition which it 
makes is that material things, on the 
outside of the curve, alone exist and are 
real. Its supposition, therefore, leaves 
out of account one half of our experience 
— the half that lies on the inside of the 
curve. Its supposition, therefore, offers 
no explanation of one side of our experi- 
ence. It cannot, therefore, be accepted 
as a satisfactory explanation of the whole. 
The Sensationalist philosopher looks 
at the other side, the inside, of the curve, 
and sees the inner world of our thoughts 
and feelings and sensations and ideas 
— and, seeing them, the Sensationalist or 



Materialism and Idealism 63 

Idealist forgets the other side of the curve 
altogether. The Sensationalist, like the 
Materialist, makes a supposition; but 
whereas the Materialist says, let us 
suppose that the material things, on the 
outside of the curve, alone exist and are 
real, the Sensationalist says, let us sup- 
pose that the sensations and ideas, on the 
inside of the curve, alone exist and are 
real. So the Sensationalist leaves out of 
account one half of our experience- — the 
half that lies on the outside of the curve. 
The supposition, therefore, that the Sen- 
sationalist invites us to make, offers no 
explanation of one side of our experience 
— our experience of the external world. 
It cannot, therefore, be accepted as a 
satisfactory explanation of the whole of 
our experience. 

But if the supposition or assumption 
which the Sensationalist invites us to 
make cannot possibly be a satisfactory 
explanation of the whole of our experience, 
it must be a false assumption. We must 
look into that point in the next chapter. 



64 Philosophy 

There can be no experience, except 
where there is some one who experiences 
something. The some one and the some- 
thing are, as it were, the two sides of 
a curve. Materialist philosophers hold 
that the outside of the curve, the external 
world of matter and material, moving 
things, the objects of which we have 
experience, alone are real. The material 
things which we see and touch are, on this 
assumption, the only realities, and they 
move and behave in accordance with the 
Laws of the Uniformity of Nature and of 
Universal Causation. The theory of 
Evolution can be set forth in accordance 
with these laws and with the assumption 
that material things alone are real. The 
philosophy of Materialism, however — that 
is, the assumption that matter in motion 
is all that we have experience of, affords 
no answer to the question, What does 
our experience mean — what is the good of 
it all? And it accounts only for one side 
of our experience — the outside of the 
curve, the world of material objects; 



Materialism and Idealism 65 

and it leaves, unexplained and unaccount- 
ed for, the inside of the curve, the thought 
and sensations of the subject. It makes 
what you at any rate must consider one 
great omission; for you may truly say, 
"It leaves out me!" 

We turn, then, to the philosophers who 
hold that the inside of the curve, our 
sensations and ideas, alone is real. 
They are the Sensation philosophers or 
Idealists. For the existence of matter 
we have the evidence of the senses — that 
is to say, sensations. But the sensations 
we have are all in us, not in the things: 
What then is "matter"? It is not any 
sensation you have, but something dif- 
ferent from any sensation — that is to say, 
something totally unlike what you see or 
feel or smell or taste or hear. Then, 
if you suppose matter not to be what 
you see or feel or taste or hear, would 
you or anybody miss anything, if you 
supposed it did not exist? If you have 
the sensations of seeing, feeling, tasting, 
eating, and digesting a meal and feeling 



66 Philosophy 

refreshed after it, why should you say that 
in addition to all the sensations there 
was a mysterious something else called 
" matter' ' — and why should you make 
this statement, when you cannot prove it? 
To return to the simile of the curve: 
every curve has an inside and an outside. 
The Materialist says, let us suppose 
that what is on the outside of the curve, 
viz., matter in motion, alone exists; and 
then it follows that the curve has no 
inside. The Sensationalist says, let us 
suppose that what is on the inside of the 
curve, our sensations and ideas, alone 
is real; and then it follows that the curve 
has no outside. But the object of philo- 
sophy is to find out some supposition 
which, if made, will explain the whole of 
experience, both the inside and the out- 
side of the curve. And if the Sensa- 
tionalist hypothesis fails to explain the 
outside, it cannot be a satisfactory hypo- 
thesis. But why it is thus unsatisfactory 
remains to be inquired. 



CHAPTER III 

SCEPTICISM IN PHILOSOPHY 

The questions in which philosophy has its 
rise are whether our experience, when we 
come to reflect upon it as a whole, has 
any meaning, and if so, what. The only 
way in which philosophy can answer those 
questions is to make some supposition or 
assumption about experience; and then 
see whether that supposition enables us to 
understand experience as a whole and 
to understand what is the good of it 
all. 

Now, when we speak of experience, we 
imply not only that there is experience 
but also that somebody has it. The 
person who has the experience and the 
experience which he has are, as it were, 
the two sides of a line ; we may, if we will, 
distinguish them, and as a matter of 

67 



68 Philosophy 

fact we do. We cannot confuse them or 
mistake one for the other. But we 
cannot separate them. We cannot take 
one side of the line away from the other. 
The two sides cannot exist apart. We 
can attend to one side; and, whilst we 
are doing so, we can forget about the 
other. When we do so attend to one 
side and forget about the other, we are 
said to be dealing with an abstraction. 
And it is, as has been said already, with 
such abstractions that all science deals. 
Physical science deals with abstractions 
on one side of the line — with such ab- 
stractions as weight, or light, or heat, 
or motion, or matter. Psychology, or 
the science of the mind, deals with 
abstractions on the other side of the line — 
with such abstractions as sensations, feel- 
ings, will. And when the question arises, 
what is the meaning of our experience? 
what does it all come to? some philo- 
sophers look out from one side of the line 
and say that they can see nothing but 
matter in motion; while others look out 



Scepticism in Philosophy 69 

from the other side of the line and say 
they can see nothing but sensations. 

The supposition which the Materialist 
philosophers make is : Let us suppose that 
matter in motion alone exists. But that 
supposition obviously will not explain all 
our experience, for our thoughts and 
ideas and sensations certainly exist, and 
certainly are not material things. The 
supposition which the Sensationalist 
philosophers make is: Let us suppose 
that sensations exist and that sensa- 
tions alone exist. But that supposition 
obviously will not explain all our experi- 
ence, for the world of things around us 
certainly exists. 

Then, if the Sensation philosopher is 
wrong in saying that our sensations alone 
exist, and that the world of objects around 
us has no existence and no reality, are we 
sure that he is right even in saying that 
there are such things as sensations? 
That is an important question, because if 
there are such things as sensations some 
very remarkable consequences follow, 



70 Philosophy 

Now, it may seem at first very absurd 
to ask whether there are such things as 
sensations, because, of course, everybody 
knows that we have sensations of sight 
and touch and taste and hearing. But 
the Sensation philosopher says not only 
that there are sensations, but that sen- 
sations alone exist, and that they can 
and do exist by themselves. And that, 
when you come to think of it, is just as 
absurd as saying not only that some 
things have weight, but that weight can 
exist and does exist all by itself. Some 
knives are sharp; but it would be absurd 
to say that sharpness exists, all by itself, 
and that knives do not — that there are no 
knives. And so, too, it is absurd to say 
that because we have sensations, there- 
fore sensations can exist and do exist 
all by themselves. Sensations by them- 
selves are, of course, abstractions, not 
realities, just as sharpness is an abstrac- 
tion and not something which you find 
going about all by itself. 

But that is just the supposition which 



Scepticism in Philosophy 71 

the Sensation philosophers make, and 
which they ask you to believe — that 
sensations can and do exist all by them- 
selves. They say, let us suppose that 
there are sensations, separate sensations, 
all by themselves, and then we shall be 
able to explain experience as a whole 
and to show what is the good of it all. 
Well, it does not seem to us in the least 
likely that by starting from sensations by 
themselves, which are abstractions, not 
realities, that we shall ever get reality 
out of them: sensations by themselves do 
not exist, they are nought; and by adding 
nought to nought, all we shall get in the 
end is nought. However, the Sensation 
philosopher says that if with him we 
suppose the ultimate facts of our experi- 
ence to be loose and separate sensations, 
we shall be able to explain experience as 
a whole. So let us try to suppose it. 

Of course, if the Sensationalist is right 
in saying not only that sensations exist, 
but that sensations alone exist, it natu- 
rally follows that matter and material 



72 Philosophy 

things do not exist. We will concede 
that to him right off. When we have 
the orange in our hands, we have cer- 
tain sensations of touch and resistance, 
of sight and colour and smell, and we may 
have certain sensations of taste. And if 
anybody asks us what else there is in the 
orange, and what we mean by saying that 
the orange is a material thing, or made 
of matter, we will reply that that is a 
difficult question. We will look the diffi- 
culty boldly in the face — and pass on. If, 
indeed, sensations alone exist, then, of 
course, matter and material things do 
not. That naturally follows from the 
supposition which the Sensation philo- 
sopher makes: his supposition is that the 
world of material things, on the outside 
of the curve, is not real and does not 
exist. 

The one thing, and the only thing of 
which I can be certain, if the Sensation 
philosopher is right in his supposition, is 
that I have sensations and that my sen- 
sations exist. If I see an orange, I am 



Scepticism in Philosophy 73 

certain that I have a sensation of sight. 
If I feel it, I am certain I have a sensa- 
tion of touch. If I eat it, I am certain 
I have a sensation of taste. But if I 
go further and say that in addition to 
my sensations of sight, touch, taste, 
and so on, there is something else — 
that there is a real orange, then, accord- 
ing to the Sensation philosopher, I am 
talking nonsense, and saying I know not 
what. 

The real orange, according to the Sen- 
sationalist, is simply my sensations and 
nothing else. Very good! but, if this is 
true, let us see what follows. Suppose I 
am talking with somebody, say with you. 
What do I know of you? I see you, that 
is to say I have certain sensations of sight, 
as I look at you. I hear you speak, that is 
to say I have certain sensations of sound, 
as I listen to you. I shake hands with 
you, that is to say I have certain sen- 
sations of touch, as I feel the grasp of your 
hand. And then, according to the Sen- 
sation philosopher, I go further and say 



74 Philosophy 

to myself that in addition to the sen- 
sations of sight and hearing and touch 
that I have, there is something else — that 
there is a real person before me, and that 
you really exist. 

But, according to the Sensation philo- 
sopher, if I say that, I must be talking 
nonsense, just as, according to him, I was 
talking nonsense when I said before that 
I was eating a real orange. The truth, 
according to him, was that then I was 
not eating a real orange but that I was 
having certain sensations. And the truth, 
according to him, is that now I am not 
talking to a real person but that I am 
having certain sensations. If in the one 
case I was not eating a real orange, but 
only having certain sensations, so in the 
other case I am only having certain sen- 
sations and not talking to a real person. 
Just as, according to him, there is no real 
orange but only certain sensations that 
I have, so there are no real persons 
besides myself, but only certain sen- 
sations that I have. 



Scepticism in Philosophy 75 

Thus, if we agree to the supposition 
which the Sensation philosopher makes, 
it not only follows that there are no 
things beyond my sensations, but that 
there are no persons either. I am the 
only person who exists. That may be a 
conclusion very satisfactory to me. But 
how do you like it? 

Of course, when the Sensationalist 
concludes that the table or the chair 
does not exist, the table or the chair can- 
not object, because the table and the 
chair are not alive and are not conscious 
of their own existence. But you are. 
And you may object to being told that 
you are only certain sensations that I 
have, and that you have no real existence. 
Perhaps you will say to the Sensation 
philosopher that you are not like the 
table or the chair; that you do exist; and 
that you are as real as he is. And 
doubtless the Sensationalist will feel that 
there is something in that; he will have 
to admit that you are as real as he is. 
And you may think that that settles the 



76 Philosophy 

question. But it does not. And that 
brings us to the next consequence which 
follows from the supposition that the 
Sensationalist makes. 

The Sensationalist has said, as we 
know, Let us suppose that we have sen- 
sations. And you saw nothing wrong 
with that: of course, we have sensations. 
Very well! then, he said, if we have 
sensations, there is no need to suppose 
that there is anything else. If we have 
the sensations of seeing, touching, and 
tasting an orange, and always can have 
them or get them when we want them, 
what on earth is the need of supposing 
that over and above them there is some- 
thing else — a real, material orange? 
There is no need, he said. And if I have 
the sensations of seeing and hearing and 
touching other people, what is the need 
of supposing that over and above or 
behind the sensations there is any per- 
son? There is no need, he said, to sup- 
pose that there is anybody in existence, 
or anything in existence, but myself 



Scepticism in Philosophy 77 

and my own sensations. But, you said, 
I am as real as you are, my sensations 
are as good as yours. And, as we saw, 
the Sensationalist has to admit that. 
And you thought that settled the 
question. 

But it does not settle the question. 
That is just where a difference of opinion 
comes in. And the difference is this. 
You tell the Sensationalist that you are as 
real as he is; and you mean that you are 
both real persons. He will admit, he 
cannot deny, that you are as real as he is. 
But, then, he does not believe that you 
are real. And accordingly he must admit 
that if you are not a real person, neither 
is he himself. And he not only admits it, 
he maintains it. 

The Sensationalist says, you believe, or 
think you believe, in the existence and the 
reality of yourself; but what do you mean 
by yourself? Let us clear up our notions, 
the Sensationalist will say, and see what 
is really the meaning of the words we use, 
and we shall find out that there is no 



78 Philosophy 

more meaning in the word "self" than 
there is in the word "matter." 

We have seen that, if we suppose we 
have sensations, there is no need to 
suppose that there really are material 
things: if we have the sensation of seeing 
an orange and feeling it and smelling it 
and tasting it, there is no need to suppose 
that there really is anything more than 
the sensations we have had of it, or may 
have of it. Indeed, if we come to think 
of it, "matter" is a word which has no 
meaning in it ; for what is supposed to be 
meant by it? 

Something purely negative. Matter is 
not what we see — it is not the sensation of 
sight. It is not the sensation of touch, or 
the sensation of smell or taste or of sound. 
It is not any sensation or perception that 
we have. The truth is, the Sensationalist 
says, matter is not anything whatever at 
all. Take away from a thing everything 
we know of it, every sensation or percep- 
tion that we have of it — and what there is 
left, he says, is nothing — that is "matter. " 



Scepticism in Philosophy 79 

Well, he goes on to say, if you apply the 
same course of reasoning to the self, you 
will find that you are driven to the same 
conclusion. 

Just as in all your sensations or per- 
ceptions of sight, touch, sound, taste, 
smell, you never come across anything 
but the sensations or perceptions and 
never find any " matter, " so too in all 
your sensations or perceptions of sight, 
touch, sound, taste, or smell, you never 
come across anything but the sensations 
or perceptions — you never come across 
any ' ' self. ' ' Like the word ' - matter, ' ' the 
term ' ' self ' ' is merely a word which we use. 

The Sensationalist philosopher, Hume, 
states this quite clearly and plainly. He 
says: 1 "When I enter most intimately 

x " There are some philosophers who imagine we are 
every moment intimately conscious of what we call our 
self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in 
existence, and are certain, beyond the evidence of a 
demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. 
.... Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary 
to that very experience which is pleaded for them, nor 
have we any idea of Self, after the manner it is here ex- 
plained. . . . For my part, when," etc. 



80 Philosophy 

into what I call myself, I always stumble 
on some particular perception or other, 
of heat or cold, light or shade, love or 
hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can 
catch myself at any time without a per- 
ception, and never can observe anything 
but the perception. ... If any one, 
thinks he has a different notion of himself, 
upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, 
I must confess I can no longer reason with 
him. . . . He may perhaps perceive 
something simple and continued which he 
calls himself; though I am certain there is 
no such principle in me. But setting 
aside some metaphysicians of this kind, 
I may venture to affirm of the rest of 
mankind that they are nothing but a 
bundle or collection of different per- 
ceptions. " 

Self, then, according to Hume and the 
Sensationalists, is a mere word: it stands 
for " nothing but a bundle or collection of 
different perceptions' ' or sensations. In 
reality, according to the Sensationalists, 
there exists nothing but perceptions or 



Scepticism in Philosophy 81 

sensations ; and though people will believe 
that they themselves exist, and that 
things or matter exist, the truth, accord- 
ing to Hume, is that matter and self 
are mere words and nothing more, or, 
at any rate, if they are anything more, 
we do not know and cannot possibly know 
what they are. 

The object of philosophy is, let us 
remember, to discover whether our ex- 
perience of the world and life has any 
meaning; and, if so, what. For this 
purpose, philosophers make supposi- 
tions or assumptions. The Sensation 
philosophers say, Let us suppose that 
sensations exist, and we will explain the 
meaning of experience and what good it 
all is. We, therefore, have listened to 
their supposition — and what is the result 
of it all? The result is that if we suppose 
that there are such things as sensations — 
abstract sensations, all by themselves — 
then there are no persons and no matter, 
or, at any rate, we cannot possibly know 
whether there are or what they are. 

6 



82 Philosophy 

Now, that conclusion is philosophical 
scepticism; it is that everybody believes 
that there are persons or things, but 
nobody can possibly know whether there 
are or what they are. And that con- 
clusion is the logical result of the supposi- 
tion which the Sensationalist invited us to 
make, viz., that there are such things as 
sensations, loose and separate sensations, 
all by themselves. We were invited to 
make that supposition on the ground 
that, if only we would admit it, then it 
would be possible to explain the meaning 
of experience and what good it all is. 
And now we find that, so far from explain- 
ing our experience, this supposition leads 
us to the conclusion that if there are per- 
sons who have experience, and if there are 
things of which they have experience, 
it is impossible to know who or what they 
are. 

The truth, of course, is that sensations 
exist — but not all by themselves, loose 
and separate. There is no such thing as 
a toothache, loose and separate, all by 



Scepticism in Philosophy 83 

itself, floating about in space, with nobody 
to feel it. If nobody has the tooth- 
ache, there will be no toothache in exist- 
ence. If nobody feels anything, there 
will be no sensation at all. So, too, if 
there are no things to have experience of, 
nobody can have experience of them, 
and there will be no experience at all. 
And if there is nobody to have any sen- 
sations, nobody to have any experience, 
there will be no experience and no sen- 
sations at all. 

But the point we have started from all 
along is that there is experience, and that 
what philosophy has to do is to inquire 
whether experience has any meaning — 
what it all comes to — and what is the 
good of it all. Plainly, then, if there is 
experience there must be some one who 
has the experience — the subject of experi- 
ence — and there must be something which 
he experiences — the object of experience. 
They are the two sides of the curve, the 
inside and the outside, and they may be 
distinguished, but they cannot possibly 



84 Philosophy- 

be separated. Still less is it possible to 
deny the existence of either the one side 
or the other. 

Hume, in the passage already quoted, 
does deny the existence of the one side; 
he denies the existence of the self — he 
denies the existence of himself. But 
how could he deny it, if he did not exist, 
himself, to do it? He says, in effect: 
When I enter into myself, I find that 
there is no self and that I do not exist. 
But if there is no self, how can he enter 
into it? If he is right in saying that I do 
not exist, how can he be right in saying 
that "I enter into myself" and find this 
sensation or that? The plain truth of 
the matter — simple enough for the sim- 
plest of us to see — is that no man can say 
U I do not exist" without contradicting 
himself, for, unless he existed, he could 
not say it. And if, when he says, "I 
do not exist," he contradicts himself, 
then he is wrong in saying so, and he does 
exist. 

But what if, when he is talking to you, 



Scepticism in Philosophy 85 

and arguing with you, he says that you, 
at any rate, don't exist? Well, then he is 
contradicting himself again, for he says: 
"I am arguing with you. I know very 
well what you mean when you say that 
you exist. And I tell you that you 
don't." Now, if you didn't exist, he 
could not tell you that, or anything else. 
But he is telling you. So he is just con- 
tradicting himself once more, when he is 
trying to make you believe that you don't 
exist. If you did not exist, he could not 
convince you. And if he does convince 
you that you don't exist, he must be 
wrong, because he could not convince you, 
unless you were there to be convinced. 
So anyway he is wrong in saying that that 
side of the curve — the side which is you 
or me, the side which is the subject of 
experience, does not exist. 

And he is just as wrong in saying that 
the other side of the curve, on which lie 
the things we experience, the objects of 
experience, does not exist. Just consider 
what Hume says. He says : Let us suppose 



86 Philosophy 

that there are no things or objects ; let us 
suppose that there are only loose and 
separate sensations. For instance, let us 
suppose that there is no real orange, but 
that we have only loose and separate 
sensations of colour, shape, touch, and 
taste, and smell. Of course, you will 
agree that if, indeed, there is no real 
orange, then there can only be the sen- 
sations of smell and taste and colour 
and shape and touch. 

If, however, there is a real orange, as 
you and I believe, like everybody else, 
then the various qualities it has of colour 
and shape and smell, and so on, belong to 
it; they are found in an orange and no- 
where else — the orange is the only thing 
in which precisely those qualities are 
found. But if, as Hume says, there is no 
real orange, in which those qualities are to 
be found combined, then the qualities — 
or, as he calls them, the sensations — of 
colour, smell, taste, and so on, are not 
combined, but are, as he calls them, loose 
and separate. 



Scepticism in Philosophy 87 

But though the sensations are, accord- 
ing to him, loose and separate, and have 
no connection with each other in them- 
selves, still he admits that when we have 
one of the sensations, we expect the 
others — when we have the sensation of 
seeing a lemon, or of seeing somebody eat 
a lemon, our mouths water, or at least 
we have that sensation — we can almost 
taste the sourness of the lemon. 

So, then, this is how things stand : Hume 
says: Let us suppose that sensations 
are loose and separate, and that, when we 
see a fire — that is, when we have a certain 
sensation of sight, there is no real reason 
why we should, when we go up to the fire, 
have a certain other sensation, viz., a feel- 
ing of warmth. Then, we say to Hume, 
if there is no real reason why the two 
sensations should be connected together, 
why ever do we expect the one sensation 
when we have the other — when we see 
fire, why do we expect warmth? Surely, 
we say, the reason why we expect them 
together is that they are really connected 



88 Philosophy 

together. No! says Hume, the two sen- 
sations are quite loose and separate: 
they have no connection together what- 
ever; all that happens is that you have 
got into the habit of thinking that they go 
together, but that is merely a habit 
and nothing else. 

You have got into the habit, Hume 
says, of expecting the one when you see 
the other, but the habit and the expec- 
tation are in you and in your mind, not 
in them : the connection is in your thought, 
there is no connection in them ; they, as he 
has always said, are loose and separate. 
That is what Hume has said all along: 
Let us suppose that sensations are loose 
and separate and not connected together. 
And when you say: "But they are not 
loose and separate ; whenever I see a fire 
I find it hot"; he says, "Oh! that is only 
a habit you have got into." 

Now, the fact is that Hume has begged 
the question all along. The question is 
whether there is a fire ; and Hume has said 
in effect, though perhaps you did not 



Scepticism in Philosophy 89 

notice it, Let us suppose that there is no 
fire; let us suppose that there are only- 
sensations — the sensations of seeing a 
blaze and feeling it warm — then I shall 
be able to convince you that there is no 
fire. And, naturally, if you admit to 
begin with that there is no fire, you will 
have to admit to the end that there is no 
fire. But the idea that there is really 
no fire was, at the beginning, only a sup- 
position which Hume invited you to 
make. And he asked you to make it, on 
the ground that then he could do what it 
is the business of a philosopher to do, viz., 
explain our experience, and tell us what 
it all means. And if he had done so, 
then we should have had to think that 
after all, unlikely as it seemed that there 
was no real fire, there might be some- 
thing in the supposition. 

But, what has been the result of mak- 
ing the supposition that there is no real 
fire and that there are no real objects of 
any kind? 

The result has been a perfectly natural 



90 Philosophy 

and logical result and exactly what we 
might have expected. If we begin by- 
supposing that there are really only loose 
and separate sensations in the world, 
we must end by believing that loose and 
separate sensations alone exist, and that 
there are no real things or objects, such as 
a fire, and no real persons; and that 
no rational man can believe that there are 
any real things or any real persons. And, 
plainly, any rational man who begins 
by assuming that there are no real things 
— that fire, for instance, does not exist — 
must, if he is consistent and logical, 
maintain up to the end, that there are 
no real things — that the external world, 
the world of things on the outside of the 
curve, has no existence. 

But no rational man, when he comes 
to see what are the consequences of 
assuming that loose and separate sen- 
sations alone exist, will agree to the 
assumption. The rational man wants 
some assumption that will explain experi- 
ence; and if such an assumption as that 



Scepticism in Philosophy 91 

which Hume and the Sensationalists make 
results in the conclusion that experience 
has no meaning at all, the rational man 
will set aside that assumption and seek 
some other. 

Now, can we learn anything from 
Hume and the Sensation philosophers? 
Yes, we can. We learn this, that if we 
begin by denying the existence of the out- 
side of the curve — that is, of the external 
world, of such objects as fire, for instance, 
we can never reach an explanation of 
anything. Very good! then, if we want 
to learn what our experience all comes 
to, what is the meaning and the good of it 
all, we must begin by supposing that the 
outside of the curve is real, that objects 
do really exist. 

And what of the inside of the curve? 
Well, as I hope you will remember, we 
saw that some men of science started by 
assuming, for their own part, that the 
things around us, the things on which 
they experimented, were real and were 
the only realities. But, of course, those 



92 Philosophy 

things were things which they observed 
and on which they experimented. Things 
which nobody can observe or form any 
opinion about are things which physical 
science declines to have to do with. 
Science deals only with things that can 
be presented to the mind. Mind is 
essential to science: science can't get 
on without it. The outside of the curve 
— the world of objects — is essential to 
science; and the inside of the curve — the 
mind to which those objects are presented 
— is equally essential to science. 

The reason of that is of the very sim- 
plest : neither side of the curve can exist 
without the other. And what is true of 
science is equally true of all knowledge 
and all experience: there must be a sub- 
ject who knows, and objects which he 
knows. And neither can exist without 
the other. We can abstract the one 
from the other; and whilst we are examin- 
ing it, we can forget the other. But the 
other is there all the same. 

A mind without anything to know, 



Scepticism in Philosophy 93 

would not be a mind : if it were conscious 
of nothing at all, it would not be a con- 
sciousness, or a mind. And an object 
which nobody whatever knows to exist, 
is one of which nobody can say whether 
it exists or not. Obviously it is not an 
object of knowledge, for nobody even 
knows whether there is such a thing. 
And if nobody knows whether there is 
such a thing, it cannot be of any use for 
explaining things, or for any other pur- 
pose. Consequently, if that is what is 
meant by matter, then nobody even 
knows whether there is such a thing or 
not: it is something which nobody what- 
ever knows to exist, and of which nobody 
can ever possibly say whether it exists 
or not. If there were such a thing it 
would be of no use to us; and we do not 
know whether there is such a thing or not. 
If anyone were to tell us that there is 
something such that no mind whatever 
could know it, or know whether it existed 
or not, we might very well say to him, 
then how, pray, do you know that there 



94 Philosophy 

is such a thing? And of course he could 
not tell us, for a very simple reason: he 
would be talking nonsense. Very well! 
then, if we are going to use the term 
11 matter, " and to put any meaning in it, 
it must be something that we know — 
partially, at any rate — and not some- 
thing that we can never know. It must 
be an object of knowledge, and some- 
thing that we can find out about. In 
that sense of the word, as something 
that can be the object of knowledge, 
it stands for the outside of our curve. 
And the outside of a curve may be dis- 
tinguished from the inside, but it never 
can exist apart from it. 

The Sensationalist undertakes to ex- 
plain experience, if we will trust to our 
five senses and assume that sensations 
alone exist. From this assumption, how- 
ever, it follows that, when I am talking 
with you, I have certain sensations of 
sight and sound, and so on, but that 
those sensations alone exist, and you do 
not, just as it follows on the Sensational- 



Scepticism in Philosophy 95 

ist argument that, when I am eating an 
orange, I have certain sensations, but 
that no real orange exists. If you insist 
that you exist just as much as the Sen- 
sation philosopher who says that you 
don't, if you maintain that there is as 
much reality in yourself as in himself, 
his reply is that he sees as little reason to 
believe in the existence of himself as of 
yourself: "self" is merely a word with 
nothing to correspond to it, just as 
11 matter' ' is. There is no reason, he 
says, to believe in the existence of either 
persons or things. 

Thus the Sensation philosophy, which 
begins by assuming that sensations alone 
exist, so far from solving the problem of 
philosophy and offering some explanation 
of our experience, ends up in philosophi- 
cal scepticism, and in doubting or deny- 
ing that either persons or things have 
any existence at all. 

But this sceptical conclusion is plainly 
self-contradictory, for it requires us to 
say, "I know I don't exist" — and if I 



96 Philosophy 

don't exist, I can't know that or any- 
thing else, whereas, if I do exist, I con- 
tradict myself by saying that I don't. 

In the same way this scepticism re- 
quires us to say, "I know things do not 
exist." But this also is a self-contra- 
diction, for if things do not exist, I can 
know nothing about them, nothing what- 
ever, not even so much as whether they 
do exist or not. On the other hand, if 
things are known to me, if anything what- 
ever is known to me, then I am contra- 
dicting myself if I say that "I know 
things do not exist." 

The plain and simple truth is that both 
sides of the curve are known to us, even 
if our knowledge does not go very far in 
either direction. We know that the self 
or subject exists and that things or objects 
are known to it. But though the outside 
of a curve may be distinguished from the 
inside, it can never exist apart from it. 

Finally, it is impossible to deny the 
existence of either side of the curve, with- 
out denying the existence of the other 



Scepticism in Philosophy 97 

side. You may deny the existence of the 
one side, and not see at first that, when 
you do so, you are really denying the 
existence of the other side also. But, 
when you come to see this, you must do 
one of two things: you must either say 
with the sceptic, "Very well, then, neither 
side exists — neither matter nor mind"; 
or, if that seems too absurd, then you 
must say that both sides exist — that 
you who know something exist, and 
that the objects which you know also 
exist. In other words, you must give 
up scepticism and fall back on common 
sense. 






CHAPTER IV 

PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICE 

Every form of philosophy — and in dif- 
ferent ages philosophy has taken many 
forms — is built upon some supposition 
and is the working out of some assump- 
tion or hypothesis. And the supposition 
or assumption is always based or sup- 
posed to be based upon experience, and is 
applied to experience. Even philosophi- 
cal scepticism, inasmuch as it is a form 
of philosophy, is an assumption made 
about experience: it is the supposition 
that experience is essentially unintelli- 
gible. Scepticism when pushed to that 
extreme is obviously untenable, for experi- 
ence is certainly not altogether unintelli- 
gible: we can and do work it in practical 
life with a considerable amount of suc- 
cess. But the scepticism which, without 

98 



Philosophy in Practice 99 

going to this extreme, points out to any 
form of philosophy that there are things 
which that philosophy does not succeed in 
explaining, is very necessary to prevent 
the philosophy of the time being from 
falling into dogmatism. The use and the 
value of scepticism is that it reminds 
philosophy, sometimes very sharply and 
disagreeably, that no form of philosophy 
is final; and that any form of it is useless 
and simply cumbers the ground if it does 
not live and grow. 

The supposition by which we have 
tested the philosophy of Materialism on 
the one hand, and Sensationalism on the 
other, is the assumption that experience 
is intelligible, and in some sense a whole, 
and that there is not only meaning but 
also good in it. But on this point — on 
the question, What is the good of it all? 
a question that certainly deserves con- 
sidering — we have said nothing hitherto, 
because we have been examining Sen- 
sationalism and Materialism, and they 
profess to consider only what is, or what 



ioo Philosophy 

existence is, or what reality is, and they 
do not go on to ask what is the good of 
matter in motion, or of loose and separate 
sensations. And yet it is clear not only 
that we find in our experience matter 
and mind, or subjects and objects, but 
that we also find action and will. 

Any philosophy, therefore, which pro- 
fesses to offer us some supposition 
which will explain experience, ought cer- 
tainly to try not only to explain know- 
ledge and existence, but also to explain 
action and will. When we will things 
and do them, we have some reason for 
doing so — we have some end in view; and, 
at the time, we consider the end we have 
in view to be good. So philosophy ought 
to consider whether there is really any 
end, and any good, in our experience, 
and if so, what it is. And, as has already 
been said, the supposition on which 
we have been going is that there is some 
good in our experience, and in experience 
as a whole, just as we have assumed that 
there is some meaning in it. 



Philosophy in Practice 101 

You will see, therefore, that from this 
point of view, on this supposition that is 
to say, philosophy is intensely practical. 
We want to know what is the meaning 
of experience — that is to say, to what end 
it is directed, what good it achieves or 
attempts to achieve. The questions we 
started from at the beginning were, 
What is the meaning of experience? 
What does it all come to? What is the 
good of it all? These questions are 
practical questions; and the attempt to 
answer them, in word and deed, is philo- 
sophy in practice. 

Philosophy, in a word, is practical. It 
does not deal with abstractions, as science 
does — for science deals with such ab- 
stractions as weight or heat or light; 
and it deals with them not only as if they 
existed apart from things, but as if these 
abstractions could exist without being 
known by the person who abstracts them. 

Philosophy again does not deal with 
such abstractions as knowledge and ex- 
istence are, if they are taken by them- 



102 Philosophy 

selves. Philosophy, being practical, deals 
with life as it is lived, with knowledge 
and existence as they are manifested and 
actually experienced — that is, with the 
very life of experience itself. 

The object of philosophy is not merely 
to construct a system of truth: to do that, 
it would have to consider knowledge and 
existence as things apart from our actual 
lives as we actually live them; and if it 
did so consider them as something apart, 
then it would not be constructing a 
system of truth, for it would be leaving 
out the most important fact of all — 
that is, our life as we actually live it. 
Such truth as philosophy would attain, if 
it confined its attention to knowledge and 
existence, would be partial, incomplete, 
and abstract truth. Or, rather, since 
philosophy does sometimes confine its 
attention to knowledge (epistemology) 
and existence (ontology), such truth as it 
does then attain is partial, incomplete, 
and abstract. And so it is like such 
truth as is attained by science, but with 



Philosophy in Practice 103 

this difference, that science deals only 
with material existence, or with matter 
alone, and consequently the truth which 
science attains is even more partial and 
more abstract. 

The living truth is truth which is 
carried into action. I tender you a coin, 
and ask whether it is a sovereign. You 
look at it and say that it is. Now, if you 
will give me twenty shillings for it, what 
you say is a living truth: it is readiness 
to act and results, if necessary, in action. 
If you say that it is a sovereign, and won't 
give me twenty shillings for it, your 
words are not a living truth. 

Now, philosophy aims at the living 
truth — a truth you can live by, and act 
on. Philosophy, when it is practical, is 
not merely a system of truth but a method 
of action. It is not merely abstract 
truth but living truth. It is, that is 
to say, not merely the truth about what is, 
but something more — the truth about 
what ought to be, the only truth in the 
light of which it is possible to live. When 



104 Philosophy 

a man acts, he intends to do something 
which is as yet not done; and he intends 
to do it because it seems good to him to 
do it. He has an end in view which he 
means to accomplish; and he means to 
accomplish it, because he thinks good to 
do so. The end at which he aims and 
the good which he means to realise are 
the same thing. But the end and the 
good which he aims at must be known to 
him, otherwise he could not aim at it, 
and intend it. Being known to him, it 
must have some reality and existence; 
but, being something which he is engaged 
in doing and resolved to accomplish, it 
is something not yet achieved, not yet 
realised. The end and the good, there- 
fore, that he has in view is real, because 
it is known to him and intended by him; 
and yet it is not perfectly realised because 
he is still engaged in doing it and has not 
yet fully done it. 

Now, that is the description and char- 
acter both of every moment of our lives, 
and of all our life. We are, at every 



Philosophy in Practice 105 

moment, and all through our active life, 
engaged on something which is as yet 
not done but only in the process of being 
done. The end and the good is never 
at any moment realised, but always and 
at all times in process of being realised. 
The end and the good is never done 
but is always to be done. It is in this 
that the continuity of our lives consists. 
What makes them continuous is the fact 
that, all the time, we are engaged in 
doing something not yet achieved ; we are 
always in process of doing something not 
yet done. Life's work is never done. It 
is never fully accomplished. And the 
work of life is the good and the end 
which you are always striving to realise 
and are always finding to be not yet 
realised. 

To some extent and in some sense, the 
good exists and is known to you, other- 
wise you could not aim at it or strive after 
it. Your will is set on it, and your 
action directed to it; and to some extent 
you are achieving it. And whatever you 



106 Philosophy 

are engaged in doing, you are trying to do 
because you think it good, and because 
you think it ought to be done, and 
because you think you can do it. You 
would not be trying to do it, if you 
thought you could not do it, or if you did 
not think good to do it. 

Well, then, if at every moment of our 
lives we are engaged in doing something 
that is as yet not done, and if we are 
trying to do it because we think we can 
do it, and because we see fit, or think it 
good, to do it, what is the end or good, 
the work of life, which is never fully 
accomplished but is always yet to be 
done? What is the meaning of experi- 
ence — that experience which is the life 
we live? What is the good which, in 
experience, is partly disclosed to us but 
never fully realised by us, and which is or 
may be partly, but is never wholly, 
attained by us? 

Those are the very questions from 
which we started out in the first chapter 
— the questions which philosophy is the 



Philosophy in Practice 107 

attempt to answer. And they are practi- 
cal questions. Further, they are ques- 
tions to which every man is always giving 
a practical answer by the way in which he 
lives. But though he is giving a practical 
answer, he rarely stays to consider what 
the answer is, or whether it is the right 
one. The moment he stays — if ever he 
does stay — to put those questions to 
himself, he becomes a philosopher, and 
tries to frame some answer to them. 

We see now, however, that experience is 
not merely something that we suffer but 
also something that we do; and that the 
important question is not so much, 
What is the nature of the experience 
which one has, or through which one 
goes? not so much, What do I suffer? as, 
What should I do? The fundamental 
fact about our experience is that we are 
always, at every moment of our conscious 
lives, trying to do something and in 
process of doing it. 

The most important question, then, 
that we can raise is, whether we are 



108 Philosophy 

engaged in trying to do the right thing. 
And if we want to answer the question, 
as we do want, seeing that we are philo- 
sophers — that is to say, practical men, 
we can turn only to experience. To it 
alone can we look for an answer, because 
we have nothing but experience to turn 
to. And the experience to which we 
have to turn is the experience of living 
beings who are engaged always in trying 
to do something and are in process of 
doing it. That is in truth and in fact 
the only experience that is known to us. 

Experience is not mere knowledge, or 
knowledge of existence: it consists in what 
a conscious being tries to do, and is in 
constant process of doing. It is conscious 
being and doing. 

We must, therefore, now revise the con- 
ception of experience which we adopted in 
the previous chapters when we were 
concerned principally with the question of 
knowledge and existence — the questions 
whether matter in motion alone existed, 
whether existence without knowledge was 



Philosophy in Practice 109 

an intelligible proposition, whether loose 
and separate sensations could exist with- 
out being known by any person. 

In the earlier chapters, our supposition 
was that knowledge and existence were 
inseparable, as are the sides of a curve. 
And we left action altogether out of 
account. But we stuck to the sup- 
position that experience is in some sort a 
whole: we were logically bound to do 
so because our purpose was to find out 
what could be said of experience as a 
whole — whether as a whole it had any 
meaning and any good. We recognised 
that experience had two sides or presented 
two aspects, mind and matter, knowledge 
and existence, subject and object. On 
the outside of the curve lay the world 
of material things; on the inside, the 
world of thoughts and sensations. As 
regards the outside of the curve, science is 
every day making it more and more 
probable that through all the host of 
material things one system runs; and 
that there is some reason for supposing 



no Philosophy 

that that side of experience forms a 
whole. 

But what of the inside of the curve, on 
which lie thoughts, sensations, emotions, 
passions, desires? On the inside there 
lies evidently and undeniably not one 
mind or human being, but countless 
minds, all the individual human beings 
that make up the human race. Well, 
here we can see that even they have some 
unity and in some sort form a whole. 

In the first place, they are not wholly 
cut off from one another: they communi- 
cate with each other. They have thoughts 
in common. They have or may have 
common purposes. They take or can 
take common action to realise the pur- 
poses and carry out the ideas that they 
have in common. We live to a large ex- 
tent in and for one another. Indeed, were 
that not so, no one of us could live at all. 

Again, we say, and with more truth 
than perhaps we imagine, that we can 
enter into one another's thoughts. And 
when we do this, and put ourselves into 



Philosophy in Practice in 

the other man's place, we find the dif- 
ference between us less vast: in spite of 
apparent differences, the man's a man for 
all that. There is the bond, which 
unites or is capable of uniting all the 
countless individuals, who occupy the 
inside of our curve. 

But though we thus see vaguely that 
what is on the inside of the curve forms, 
in a way, a unity of which the individuals 
are members; and that what is on the 
outside of the curve probably forms one 
system; still, even if this be so, what we 
have on our hands forms two wholes. 
And the supposition which we originally 
put forward was: Let us suppose that 
experience forms one whole. If, there- 
fore, we are to suppose that experience 
forms one whole, evidently we must give 
up the simile of the curve — that is to say, 
we must recognise that the division of 
experience into knowledge and existence, 
one on the inside and the other on the 
outside of the curve, is a distinction 
which we draw, and must draw, when we 



ii2 Philosophy 

see in experience only knowledge and 
existence. But it is not a distinction 
which we can maintain, when we come to 
see what is a simple and undeniable fact, 
viz., that we are active beings, always 
and at every moment of our conscious 
lives engaged in trying to do something 
and in process of doing it. That is the 
character and actual nature of experience : 
it is conscious being and doing. And if 
we suppose, as we do suppose or assume, 
that experience forms one whole, though 
it contains an infinite number of parts, 
then that whole must be realised in the 
existence, and known to the mind, of a 
supreme being, who is at once omniscient 
and perfect — the being, in short, whom 
we call God. Only to Him is real exist- 
ence and full knowledge of the whole 
possible; and thus each one of the parts, 
as it comes to comprehend that the parts 
cannot exist without the whole, declares: 
"Without Thee I cannot live." It is 
God, "in whom we live and move and 
have our being." 



Philosophy in Practice 113 

Thus our assumption that experience is 
a whole, and has a meaning and a good, 
proves, when we examine it, to require a 
previous assumption, viz., that God is, 
and that in His will, and in doing His 
will, our good and the only good consists. 

Philosophy, then, is practical. It does 
not deal with abstractions, but with life 
as it is lived and as it should be lived. 
Always and at every moment we are 
engaged in trying to do something and in 
process of doing it. As practical men 
we are philosophers — even if we are 
philosophers without knowing it. And 
it is only so far as we are philosophers, 
and consciously philosophers, that we are 
truly practical. 

Even so, much or most, of what we do, 
we do without knowing to what end it 
tends or what results it will bring about. 
The steam plough is the direct descend- 
ant of earlier forms of the plough; and 
they were all descended from the digging- 
stick first used. And yet the man who 
used it first had no conception of what it 



ii4 Philosophy 

would eventually become. So we for 
the most part are similarly ignorant of 
what will come of what we, as active, 
living, conscious beings are always, and 
at every moment of our conscious lives— 
at this moment, for instance — engaged in 
trying to do and are in process of doing. 
That ignorance would be appalling, if 
you and I were the only conscious beings 
in existence; or if all conscious beings 
were as ignorant as you and I of the mean- 
ing of experience and of the good that is 
being achieved in the process of experi- 
ence. But we cannot believe that experi- 
ence is thus blind throughout. 

Nor would the supposition, made by 
philosophy, that experience expresses a 
meaning and attains a good, be of much 
value; nor has it indeed any practical 
force so long as it remains a supposition 
merely. Unless it is not merely known 
but also felt, it is not practical philosophy 
or actual experience but a mere abstrac- 
tion from experience, as lifeless as that 
other abstraction, matter; and as unmean- 



Philosophy in Practice 115 

ing as those other abstractions, loose 
and separate sensations. If the supposi- 
tion is to be anything more than an 
abstraction merely known, if it is to be a 
reality felt — still more, if it is to be a reality 
acted on, then the man who is to feel it 
and to realise it must have access in his 
heart to God. 

The questions from which we started at 
the beginning were : What is the meaning 
of experience? What does it all come to? 
What is the good of it all? And philo- 
sophy, I said, was the attempt to find out 
whether there is an answer to them, and 
if so, what. For the purpose of finding 
out, it was, I said, open to us to make 
any supposition or assumption or hypo- 
thesis that we liked. The one and only 
rule of the game was that as the hypo- 
thesis or supposition or assumption had 
no other purpose than to provide an 
explanation of experience, any suppo- 
sition, which failed to explain experience 
satisfactorily, must be ruled off the 
board. 



n6 Philosophy 

I also said that as experience is con- 
tinually growing, any supposition we 
might make could only be regarded as 
provisional and not final, even if it seemed 
to explain all the facts known up to the 
time. But there is no supposition which 
does explain all the known facts to the 
satisfaction of all philosophers. And that 
is one reason which makes philosophy so 
interesting and so exciting. And for fear 
you should imagine, when you have got a 
supposition which commends itself to 
you, that all the excitement is over, and 
that nothing but the shouting remains 
to be done, I will just indicate one or two 
of the many points on which a consider- 
able difference of opinion exists. 

Like the philosopher, the man who is a 
philosopher without being aware of it 
makes assumptions, all of which require 
testing by experience, and some of which 
fail under the test. One assumption 
made by the ordinary man, and adopted 
by science, is that matter and material 
things exist whether anybody is aware 



Philosophy in Practice 117 

of them or not; and this supposition is 
disputed by some philosophers, who sug- 
gest the assumption that the only things 
that are known or can be known are 
objects of knowledge, which exist only 
as known to exist. The first supposition, 
that matter and material things exist, 
whether anybody knows them or not, 
carries with it the further supposition 
that such material things exist in space — 
a supposition which is made alike by the 
ordinary non-philosopher and by the 
man of science. If this supposition is 
true, then it ought to be at least an 
intelligible supposition, consistent with 
itself and with any other supposition 
which we make. 

But when we come to examine the 
notion of space, we find it inconsistent 
with itself. It is inconsistent with itself 
in the first place, because we cannot con- 
ceive whether space is or is not infinite. 
One or the other it ought to be : it cannot 
be both infinite and not infinite. And 
yet, if we suppose that space really exists, 



n8 Philosophy 

we find that we must contradict ourselves 
and say both that it is infinite and that it 
cannot be infinite. It appears first one 
and then the other ; and both appearances 
cannot be real. Hence the other sup- 
position, that space is only an appearance 
and not a reality. 

In the next place, the very term we use 
for the purpose of expressing the sup- 
position that space exists — the terms 
1 ' here ' ' and ' ' there ' ' — contradict each 
other, and each of them contradicts itself. 
Consider both points. They contradict 
each other: what do we mean by "here"? 
Certainly we mean, or rather we suppose 
that we mean, "not there." Very well! 
then. By "here" we may mean, here 
in this room, here in this county, or here 
in the north of England, or here in Eng- 
land, or here in this world, or here in this 
universe — and beyond that we cannot 
go, there is no "there" left. The "here" 
swallows up the "there"; they contradict 
each other. Everything is contained 
in the "here," and there is no "there." 



Philosophy in Practice 119 

But by "here" we may also mean here 
in this room, here at this desk, here on this 
paper, or this word on the paper, or this 
letter in the word, or this dot upon the 
letter "i," and a dot is a point, and a 
point is position without magnitude, 
something, that is to say, which has 
nothing inside it and no room inside it 
for anything — that is to say, which is not 
space at all, for space is supposed to be 
that in which something is. Thus the 
very notion of "here," that is of space, 
contradicts itself. 

And yet you believe in the assumption 
that space exists ; you suppose that it does. 
But the supposition is one on which it is 
possible for a difference of opinion to 
exist. It is a supposition which is made 
to account for that other supposition 
that there are material things which 
exist whether any conscious being — 
whether God Himself — knows them or 
not. 

So much for space. But there is 
another assumption which we all make 



120 Philosophy 

without thinking about it; and that is 
that time exists. 

Once more, if we make a supposition, it 
ought to be one which does not contradict 
itself: if it is self -contradictory, there must 
be something wrong with it. Well, look 
at this supposition that time exists. 
There is past time, present time, and 
future time, or we may say that there is 
the "now" and the "not now." And 
these two terms like the "here" and the 
"there" contradict each other; and each 
of them contradicts itself. For what 
do we mean by "now"? Obviously, 
there can be no "now" unless there is 
also a "then": there could be no present 
unless there were a past and a future. 
But the past exists no longer and the 
future has not yet come into existence — 
that is to say, both the future and the 
past are non-existent. But we said just 
now that there could be no present 
unless there were a past and a future. 
And now we see that the past and the 
future do not exist. 



Philosophy in Practice 121 

Perhaps we shall see this more clearly, 
if we ask ourselves what we mean by 
the present, by "now." "Now" means 
the present time, the present hour, the 
present day, the present age, the pres- 
ent century, the present dispensation. 
The "now" spreads itself out as far 
as ever we can go and swallows up 
every "then" that comes in front of it. 
Everything that exists, every event, I 
should say, that takes place, takes place 
"now. " Very good! but look at this 
"now. • ' It means the present time, 
the present hour, the present lecture, 
the present minute; but the present 
minute has sixty seconds in it; then 
"now" means the present second; but 
that is over, long before you can get the 
words out. The present moment is, as it 
were, the line which divides the future 
from the past. And a line, as you 
know, is length without breadth. Length 
without breadth! There is no such 
thing. Then there is no such thing as 
the present: it is just as imaginary as 



122 Philosophy 

length without breadth. It is the imagin- 
ary division between the past and the 
future. And the past and the future 
do not exist. The one is already over and 
non-existent; the other does not yet exist, 
for it has not come into existence. The 
time-divisions, past, present, and future, 
are all alike imaginary. They are divi- 
sions and distinctions which we suppose 
to exist; but the supposition is simply a 
supposition which we make; and it is 
a supposition which contradicts itself. 
And it is a supposition contradictory 
to our belief that all things — both 
those things which we call present and 
those which we call future — alike are 
known to God. 

Evidently, therefore, this supposition is 
one about which a difference of opinion 
may exist: people may fairly ask them- 
selves whether the supposition is one 
which we can really hold, or really under- 
stand — whether it is not really self- 
contradictory. 

It appears as though the present alone 



Philosophy in Practice 123 

existed ; and it also appears as though the 
present were a purely imaginary line of 
division between the past and the future. 
It appears first one and then the other; 
and both appearances cannot be real. 
And we have seen that space, in the same 
way, appears both to be finite and infinite, 
as does time itself. 

Thus we are brought face to face with a 
third point on which a considerable 
difference of opinion exists amongst philo- 
sophers — the relation of appearance to 
reality, and what we mean by the two 
terms. 

A thing, such as a building, looks 
rather different — presents a rather differ- 
ent appearance — from different points of 
view. 

From one point of view you see one 
side of it, from another another; from 
each of the sixty-four different points 
of the compass it presents a differ- 
ent appearance. And from the inside 
it appears different again. A surface, 
which feels smooth, and looks smooth, 



124 Philosophy 

when examined by the naked eye, does 
not appear smooth, when examined by 
a magnifying glass or microscope. Which 
is it really — smooth or not smooth? A 
thing which appears simple, and for long 
is considered simple, may prove on fur- 
ther examination to be compound : as you 
know, science, which discovered that 
things appeared to be made up of atoms, 
then discovered that the atoms were 
made up of molecules, and then that the 
molecules were only appearance and the 
reality was something else, electrons, or 
what not. And probably they in their 
turn will be pronounced to be ways in 
which the ultimate reality appears to us. 
Then, can we ever know the ultimate 
reality of things? Surely, it must always 
appear to us, if we are to know anything 
about it. And if so, it is the appearance 
alone which will be known to us. At 
least, so some philosophers argue. But 
other philosophers say: You talk of 
appearance; well, then, something ap- 
pears, and what appears is the real thing, 



Philosophy in Practice 125 

reality. Take the case of the building 
which presents sixty-four different ap- 
pearances from the sixty-four different 
points of the compass. It is one and the 
same building which appears. Whatever 
point you view it from, it is the same 
building : view it from sixty-four different 
points, and it is still the same building. 
Any one appearance can only be mislead- 
ing if it is mistaken for the only appear- 
ance that the thing can have and is alleged 
to be the reality and the whole. We, 
indeed, never see the building or any- 
thing else from every point of view at the 
same time. But, though with the senses 
we never can see the whole building, we 
can conceive, and, as a matter of fact, 
we always do conceive it to be a whole; 
and the whole is what we conceive to be 
the reality. Very good, then what is 
true of the building is true of the universe : 
we never can with our eyes see the uni- 
verse as a whole, but we do conceive it to 
be a whole. As it presents itself to us 
through our senses, it presents only 



126 Philosophy 

appearance; and it is a mistake we make 
if we imagine that the appearances pre- 
sented are the reality and the whole. 

Still some philosophers hold that reality, 
even if it appears to us, can but appear; 
and consequently that we can never know 
anything but the appearance. Perhaps 
the truth is that "we now see as through a 
glass darkly"; and that God alone is not 
separated from reality by appearances, 
but is Himself the reality and the source 
of the reality, that He alone knows as it 
really is. 

In our experience we find not matter 
alone, as the Materialist says, nor sen- 
sations alone, as the Sensationalist says; 
we find, further, not only knowledge and 
existence, but also action and will. 

Philosophy, therefore, which inquires 
of experience, what it all comes to, can- 
not help inquiring also what is the good of 
it all. That is a practical inquiry, and 
philosophy, therefore, is practical: philo- 
sophy does not, like science, deal with 
abstractions, but seeks a living truth — 



Philosophy in Practice 127 

that is, a truth you can live by and act 
on. When a man acts, he has an end 
in view which he wishes to accomplish, 
because it seems good to him to do so. 
At every moment of our lives, and all 
through our lives, we are engaged on 
something which is as yet not done, but 
only in the process of being done. That 
is the fundamental fact about our experi- 
ence; and consequently the most import- 
ant question that can be raised is whether 
we are engaged on the right thing. 

Thus, once more we are brought up 
against the question, what does our 
experience mean — what is the good of it 
all? Hitherto we have likened experi- 
ence to the two sides of a curve ; and now, 
even if we assume that material things, 
on the outside of the curve, form one 
system, and that the countless minds, 
on the inside of it, are or might be united 
into one system by the bond of love, 
we still have on our hands two systems, 
and not one whole. 

But if we are to adhere to our original 



128 Philosophy 

assumption that experience forms one 
whole, then that whole, the one ultimate 
and fundamental reality, must be God. 
That is a further supposition implied 
by our original assumption. If, however, 
it is to be more than a mere abstraction, 
if it is to be a reality felt and acted on, 
then the man who is to feel it and to 
realise it must have access in his heart to 
God. 



CHAPTER V 

PERSONALITY AND THE WHOLE 

The moment a man begins to reflect on 
his experience and to ask himself, what it 
all comes to, he becomes a philosopher: 
when he inquires what it all means, 
he assumes that experience is a whole. 
When we say of God that " in Him we live 
and move and have our being, " we make 
a further philosophical assumption, viz., 
that the whole is a personality. But 
this, which, from the point of view of 
philosophy, is an assumption, is, from the 
point of view of the man who feels and 
knows that in his heart he has access to 
God, no assumption but the living truth. 
Treating it, however, from the point 
of view of philosophy, as an assumption, 
and as an assumption made for the pur- 
pose of explaining experience, we have to 
9 129 



130 Philosophy 

inquire what consequences flow from it 
and whether they also help to explain 
experience. 

If, as we assume, experience is a whole, 
then its parts are not independent either 
of each other or of the whole : they have no 
separate, independent existence. On the 
contrary, they are interdependent. 

An illustration will perhaps make this 
clearer, and we may borrow one from a 
Hindu philosopher. A chariot is made 
up of the wheels, pole, and body; so long 
as the chariot exists, they are its parts. 
But, take the chariot to pieces, cast 
the pole down in one place, the body in 
another, the wheels somewhere else, and 
there is no longer any chariot. If, then, 
no chariot exists, it has of course no parts; 
and the pole, body, and wheels, conse- 
quently, are no longer parts of the chariot, 
for there is no chariot for them to be parts 
of. If you went to a watch-maker for a 
watch, and he offered you a trayful of 
wheels, levers, and so on, and tried to 
pass them off as being a watch, you 



Personality and the Whole 131 

would say that you wanted a watch, not 
a heap of wheels and levers. You would 
say and feel that they were by no means 
the same thing as a watch. 

Now, we may put this in general terms 
and say that the parts of anything are 
by no means the same as the whole. 
And, consequently, a whole is by no 
means the same thing as the parts. We 
can go further, indeed, and say that 
the parts have no existence separate 
from the whole ; for, if the whole is taken 
to pieces, the whole ceases to exist; and, 
if there is no whole, it can have no parts; 
and, only where there is a whole, can there 
be any parts. 

But now, having gone thus far, can we 
say that the chariot is a whole? Obvi- 
ously without horses the chariot is not a 
chariot in the full sense of being able to 
fulfil its function of carrying the driver 
about; it is just as useless as the watch- 
maker's tray of levers and wheels. With- 
out horses, the chariot is not a chariot, for 
without them it won't go, just as without 



132 Philosophy 

wheels it can't go. But, further, the 
driver is just as necessary as the wheels 
or the horses. And unless there were 
ground for the chariot to go on, and places 
for it to travel to and from, the chariot 
would not be a chariot. 

Plainly, then, the chariot is part of the 
world. And, speaking again in general 
terms, we may say that everything which 
has size or extension, and occupies space, 
is part of the spatial world or whole. 
And evidently the parts cannot exist 
without the whole; nor can there be any 
whole without the parts. Thus we come 
round to our starting-point, which was 
that parts are not independent of each 
other, or of the whole to which they 
belong, and of which they are parts : they 
have no separate, independent existence. 

But, if this is true of the world regarded 
from the point of view of space, perhaps it 
may be true of the world regarded from 
other points of view. But from what 
other point of view can it be regarded? 
Well, we can regard it from the point of 



Personality and the Whole 133 

view of time. We say that " things take 
time to do, " meaning that the process 
of doing them takes time. And a process 
is something that is going on and is not 
yet complete. It is not the whole, but 
part of the whole. Naturally, however, 
we are tempted to say that, when the 
thing is done, it is done — whole and 
complete. But, so too, we were tempted 
to say that when the pole, wheels, and 
body were put together, then we had a 
chariot, whole and complete. But, when 
we came to think of it, we recognised 
that the horses were just as necessary as 
the wheels; and that without the horses 
the chariot was not whole and complete. 
Well, so too it is with things that take 
time: no sooner is one done than another 
is begun. Indeed, we do one thing which 
takes time for the sake of the next, which 
also takes time: we eat for the sake of 
being strengthened by the food, we sleep 
for the sake of being refreshed for the 
next day's work. Eating and sleeping, 
like everything else that we do, are 



134 Philosophy 

processes through which we go. And 
processes are going on all around us, also; 
and one process leads on to another 
always. That is to say, each process is 
but a part. And parts, as we have seen, 
cannot exist save in the whole, to which 
they belong, and of which they are parts. 
The various processes — both those in 
which we are engaged and those which we 
watch going on — are parts of the world- 
process as a whole, and cannot be con- 
ceived as having any existence without it. 
There can be no parts, unless there is a 
whole. Thus, when we consider time, we 
come to the same conclusion as we arrived 
at when we were considering space, viz., 
that parts — in this case moments of time 
— are not, after all, independent of each 
other or of the whole to which they belong 
and of which they are parts. 

The world, then, regarded from the 
point of view of space, is a whole, and 
none of its parts has any existence 
separate from, or independent of the 
whole. And, regarded from the point of 



Personality and the Whole 135 

view of time, as a process, the world- 
process is a whole, whose parts or mo- 
ments imply the whole, and cannot be 
separated from it. 

Then, is there any other point of view 
from which the world can be regarded? 
For if there is, then we ought to consider 
whether the world, when regarded from it, 
presents the appearance of a whole. 

There is another point of view from 
which we can regard the world. We can 
regard it from the point of view of will and 
action. And when we come to examine 
it from that point of view, we shall find 
that it is a whole, the parts of which are 
not detached from one another or inde- 
pendent either of one another, or of the 
whole of which they are parts. 

Here, too, in the world of will and 
action, at first we find ourselves in the 
same attitude of mind as we were when 
we considered the chariot. We are en- 
gaged on doing something; we do it; 
and we regard what we have done, the 
action that we willed, as a whole, com- 



136 Philosophy 

plete in itself. So, too, at first, we 
regarded the chariot as being complete in 
itself, a whole; but we soon saw, that 
without horses it was not really complete, 
nor without a driver. In exactly the 
same way, when we come to look at any 
action, willed and performed, we shall see 
that it was willed and performed with 
some purpose and for the sake of some 
end. If we had had no purpose or object 
in view, we should not have done it: 
as the chariot without a driver would not 
be complete, so an action without a pur- 
pose would not be a rational action or an 
action willed. 

We are, therefore, in the world of will 
and action, always doing something, for 
the sake of something else. Our actions 
are always parts of our purpose; and, 
being parts, they imply a whole. In that 
respect, it is the same with them as we 
saw it to be with the parts of space: 
everything that has size and occupies 
space is part of the spatial world or 
whole ; and the whole cannot exist without 



Personality and the Whole 137 

any of its parts. The whole implies its 
parts; and the parts imply the whole. 
And it is, as we saw, the same with time 
as with space: all the various processes 
that are going on, in us and around us, are 
parts of the world-process as a whole, 
and cannot be conceived as existing 
without it. 

The world of will and action then forms 
a whole, just as the world of space may be 
regarded as a whole — or the world of time. 
We may regard the world-process, and 
the time it takes, as forming a whole, in 
one sense and from one point of view; 
and we may regard the world of space as 
similarly forming a whole. Each of them 
forms a whole in the sense that its parts 
are not independent of each other, and 
are not independent of the whole. No 
part of space, that is to say, can be cut 
out of the whole and taken away from 
it : the parts exist only in the whole. No 
moment can be really cut out of time and 
taken away from it: we distinguish, or 
pretend to distinguish, separate moments, 



138 Philosophy 

but they do not exist; they are not to 
be found scattered about anywhere. In 
time the moments, that is to say the 
parts, exist only in the whole. 

But, though time may be regarded as a 
whole in this way, and though space may 
be regarded as a whole in the same way, it 
is clear that time and space are not alto- 
gether independent of one another: to 
move from one point in space to another 
takes time and implies time. We can 
measure space by the time which it takes 
to go from one place to another; and 
we measure time by means of the clock- 
hands which travel round the dial, or by 
the apparent motion of the sun. 

Now, if, as some philosophers suppose, 
matter in motion is the one ultimate 
reality, then the space in which particles 
of matter move, and the time they take 
to perform their movements, may be 
distinguished from one another by us, but 
they do not exist separately and apart 
from one another. Motion, if it is to 
take place, requires both space and time; 



Personality and the Whole 139 

and in motion you cannot have the one 
without the other. They are not two 
separate and independent wholes: each 
implies the other. 

Further, if matter in motion — that is, 
matter moving in space and requiring 
time to do so — is, as is supposed by one 
school of philosophers, the ultimate 
reality, then one movement of matter, 
or one set of movements, produces an- 
other. One movement is the outcome of 
another, and is its inevitable outcome: 
from beginning to end, the whole course 
of matter in motion is inevitable, for each 
movement is determined, or rather pre- 
determined, by the previous movement. 
The whole course, indeed, was pre- 
determined from the start, or rather by 
the start: once set going, it had to go 
the way it was started. At the present 
time, not only is the past unalterable, 
but the future is fixed and pre-deter- 
mined. And, if matter in motion is the 
one ultimate reality, then we are matter 
in motion, and our movements are all 



140 Philosophy 

pre-determined, and our future is fixed, 
as fixed and unalterable as our past. 

All this follows logically, consistently, 
inevitably, from the assumption which 
some philosophers make, when they ask 
you to suppose that matter in motion 
alone exists. They have every right to 
make that supposition, if they think that 
by making it they can explain experience. 
If, however, their supposition fails to 
explain experience, then their supposition, 
that matter in motion alone exists, breaks 
down; and, if we want to explain and 
understand experience, we must try some 
other supposition. 

Then, is there anything else in our 
experience besides matter in motion? 
and, if there is, is it something which 
is pre-determined? or is it something 
which is not matter in motion and which 
is not pre-determined? 

There is something else, as we have 
already seen. There is not only the 
matter in motion which is studied in its 
many various forms by the man of 



Personality and the Whole 141 

science: there is also the student who 
studies it and manipulates it and experi- 
ments with it. There is his knowledge of 
it, as he studies it; and there is his action, 
as he experiments on it. 

It is to his action we now turn. Or, 
rather, it is to the action of any one of us, 
for we are all students of life, and making 
our experiments upon it — even if they are 
boggling ones. 

We are always doing something, or 
rather we are always in process of doing 
something. Consequently, we are always 
looking forwards — to what will hap- 
pen, if we do what we are thinking 
of, or to what will be the consequences, 
if we don't. Our eyes are fixed on 
the future, we say. But strictly speak- 
ing, our eyes travel to and fro from 
the consequences of doing the thing, to 
the consequences which will follow if we 
don't. The fact is, that the alternative 
consequences are, both of them, possible 
futures. And so long as both of them 
are possible futures, there is no future 



142 Philosophy 

which is fixed. And if there is none that 
is fixed as yet, there is none that we can 
see. We only see, and only can see, 
possible futures. 

But, eventually, that is, after consider- 
ing the consequences on the one hand of 
doing the thing, and on the other of 
abstaining from the thing, we act — that is 
to say, we choose one of the possibilities, 
and realise it. And then it may turn out 
that we did foresee — did indeed actually 
foresee — the future. 

We are, as already said, always in pro- 
cess of doing something. Life is a process 
of doing something, of action. The pro- 
cess of life is being continually realised — 
and realised precisely because we choose a 
possibility and make it a reality. If we 
had not chosen the possibility we did, 
the other possibility would have become 
the reality. The future, then, is con- 
tinually becoming what we (and others) 
make it. It is perpetually being shaped. 
The future is never finished: it is never 
finally and unalterably fixed by our action. 



Personality and the Whole 143 

There always and forever are alternative 
possibilities — the possibilities of acting 
or not acting — between which we choose. 
It is by our choice we make, or help to 
make, the future; the future is not pre- 
determined, independently of us. 

Thus, we arrive at a conclusion quite 
different from that reached by the Materi- 
alist. And the difference follows very 
naturally from the fact that we started 
from different premisses from his. He 
started from the assumption that nothing 
exists really but matter in motion — 
matter moving in space, and requiring 
time to do so. We started from the 
assumption that matter in motion could 
not be known, to begin with, unless there 
were some person to know it ; and that we, 
being persons, are always in process of 
doing something. 

It is, however, not the difference in our 
premisses that need be insisted on here. 
The question is rather as to the difference 
in our conclusions. The Materialist's 
conclusion is that the future is already 



144 Philosophy 

made, because matter in motion — which, 
according to him, alone exists — has all its 
movements pre-determined. Our con- 
clusion is that it is the active, conscious 
person who is always making the future, 
and that he is always making it because 
he is always in process of doing something. 
We have no use in our system for ready- 
made futures. We allow a choice be- 
tween alternatives, none of which is 
already made-up; and all of which are 
possible until one of them becomes actual. 
It is, then, because the Materialist 
starts from the assumption of matter in 
motion as the one reality, that he comes 
to the conclusion that the future is pre- 
determined and ready-made. Whereas, 
if we start from the assumption that 
nothing — not even matter in motion 
— can be known to exist unless there is 
some one to know it, and that no action 
can be performed unless there is some one 
who does it, we come to the conclusion 
that the future is not pre-determined and 
ready-made, but is continually being made 



Personality and the Whole 145 

by beings who choose between alternative 
possibilities. 

Let us, then, trace the consequences of 
this assumption of ours, for the interesting 
question is whether it is an assumption 
which is capable of explaining experience 
as a whole. An assumption which fails to 
do so fails to do what it undertakes to do, 
and is philosophically untenable. 

Suppose, then, that the future is not 
fixed and pre-determined, but is incessant- 
ly created by the free choice of conscious, 
active beings choosing between alterna- 
tive possibilities. Then, the notion of 
pre-determination is an erroneous notion. 
But it is one which logically and neces- 
sarily follows from supposing that matter 
in motion is the sole reality, that matter in 
motion alone exists. Therefore, the sup- 
position that matter in motion alone 
exists must be erroneous. Matter is, in 
fact, an abstraction, reached by concen- 
trating our attention on one part of our 
experience. And being an abstraction 

it is not a reality. 
10 



146 Philosophy 

Matter, then, regarded as the sole 
reality, is an abstraction and a falsity. 
The behaviour of matter, so regarded, 
however, is consistently and necessarily 
regarded as pre-determined. But, if 
matter, so regarded, is a false concep- 
tion, its pre-determination, or the pre- 
determination of its movements, is part 
of the falsity of the conception. Matter, 
then, as an independent reality, existing 
by itself, we will put aside, as being, with 
its pre-determined movements, an ab- 
straction and a falsity. 

After matter let us take space, for the 
notion of matter is closely bound up with 
the notion of space. Matter is in space, 
and space is that in which matter is and 
moves. Our position, that is to say our 
assumption or supposition, is that experi- 
ence is a whole, and that its parts, though 
they may be distinguished, have no 
existence independent of the whole, or 
apart from it. And we have seen that 
space has no independent parts: you can- 
not cut a piece out of space and take 



Personality and the Whole 147 

it away somewhere else, and you can- 
not separate one piece of space from 
another. Regarded in this way, as hav- 
ing no parts that are independent of one 
another, space bears a resemblance to 
a whole. And yet neither those who 
believe the space, in which matter is, 
to be a reality, nor we, regard it as being 
a whole. 

Those who believe space to have a 
reality of its own believe also that space 
is infinite. And if we conceive it to be 
infinite, we cannot conceive it as a whole 
— there is always some of it left over. 
That is due to the simple fact that the 
notion of infinite space is evidently 
a self-contradictory notion. It is the 
notion of a whole that is never a whole. 
It is a nightmare — the nightmare of try- 
ing to pack up your box, and finding 
that the more things you pack in, the 
more there are that you can't get in. 
You can't get any whole which will 
include infinite space. 

Thus, though space, as having no parts 



148 Philosophy 

that are independent of one another, 
bears a resemblance to a whole, not even 
those who believe in the reality of the 
space in which matter is, can believe, or 
do believe, it to be a whole. Much less 
can we, who believe experience to be a 
whole and the only whole — much less 
can we believe that space is that whole. 
If it were the whole, there would be 
nothing else but space and the matter it 
contains. But what we are supposing 
is that in experience we find much more 
than space and matter: we find, for 
instance, as a matter of experience, that 
we have knowledge and perform actions. 
Space, then, is but part of the experience 
we have, an element in the whole: it is 
not the whole of experience, nor is space 
itself a whole. Whatever view we take 
of the ultimate nature of reality, there 
can in the last resort only be one whole : if 
we suppose there are two, we make a 
self-contradictory supposition, for if we 
suppose that there are two, we thereby 
suppose that neither is the whole. 



Personality and the Whole 149 

The simple fact is that space, by itself, 
like matter by itself, is an abstraction, and 
not a reality. And every abstraction 
proves self-contradictory if it is supposed 
to be not an abstraction but a reality. 

Space, then, on our supposition that 
experience is a whole, and the whole — 
space we will put aside, as being, together 
with the matter it contains, an abstrac- 
tion from experience, and so a falsity. 

The infinity of space is a self -contra- 
dictory notion, due simply to the mistake 
of forgetting that space is an abstraction, 
and mistaking it for an independent 
reality. 

But, matter, moving in space, requires 
time for its movements. The question, 
then, is at once suggested whether time 
also is an abstraction, just as we have 
seen that matter and space are abstrac- 
tions, and even that matter moving in 
space is an abstraction from experience, 
and not the whole of our experience. 

That is a most interesting question. 
And for this reason: so long as we were 



150 Philosophy 

only talking about particles of matter, 
moving in space, we were talking about 
abstractions, which did not include our 
conscious selves, and so did not seem 
to affect us. But, when we come to 
time, we can no longer pretend that it 
does not affect us. Even if we were to 
dismiss matter and space as mere fig- 
ments of the philosophic imagination, 
and to say that the one and only reality 
is the experience of conscious, active 
selves, still we should be confronted 
with the fact that it is in time that 
thoughts succeed each other and that 
actions take place. 

We ask, then, with some interest, 
whether time, like matter and space, is an 
abstraction. 

First, we cannot help noticing that 
time bears some resemblances to space; 
and, like space, bears some affinity to a 
whole. Thus, the parts of a whole, 
though they may be distinguished from it 
and from one another, have no existence 
independent of the whole and apart from 



Personality and the Whole 151 

it. And it is clear that time, like space, 
has no independent parts, for you can- 
not cut a period out of time, and move it 
backwards or forwards to some other 
point in time; you cannot disintegrate 
time into moments, and separate a pres- 
ent moment from the preceding or the 
following moment, for the present glides 
into the past, and the future into the 
present, without any break or interval 
between the two. Regarded in this way, 
then, as having no moments or parts 
that are separate and independent of one 
another, time bears a resemblance to a 
whole, as we saw that space does. 

Time resembles space, again, in yet 
another respect. Those who conceive 
either time or space to have a reality of 
its own, believe that time like space is 
infinite. Stretch out time as far as you 
like, backwards and forwards, and yet, 
when you have stretched it out as far 
as you can, what there is, before it and 
after it, is more time. If it is infinite, 
it is infinite, and has no end either way. 



152 Philosophy 

We cannot conceive it contained in any 
whole whatever. 

Once more, as in the case of space, the 
reason for this is that the notion of 
infinite time is a self-contradictory no- 
tion; and to ask us to imagine it is the 
same thing as asking us to conceive a 
whole that is not a whole. When we try 
to do so, we are moving, once more, in 
the region of nightmares: the more we 
try to pack up infinite time, the more 
there is that won't go in. 

We, then, who suppose that there is 
only one whole — the whole of experience 
— cannot suppose that time is a whole, 
any more than we could suppose that 
space was a whole, for there can, in the 
last resort, only be one whole. Time 
may be an element in the whole, as we 
suggested that space might be. But 
the simple fact is that time by itself, like 
space by itself, is an abstraction, and not a 
reality. And every abstraction proves 
self-contradictory, when it is supposed 
to be not an abstraction but a reality. 



Personality and the Whole 153 

But though time, regarded apart from 
the experience of conscious, active selves, 
is not a reality but an abstraction, still, 
we may say, for all that, it is a reality in 
their experience, and as they experience 
it. It is, we may say, just like any other 
abstraction, for instance weight. Weight 
as an abstraction, as something all by 
itself, is something which has no exist- 
ence; yet, as it is found in our experi- 
ence, it is real enough. We cannot say 
that no things are heavy. In the same 
way, moments of time are an abstraction. 
If moments are conceived as abstractions, 
if, that is to say, each is regarded as 
something standing by itself, and is 
supposed to be separated, somehow, both 
from the moment which precedes it and 
from the moment which follows it; if 
moments are conceived to be, as it were, 
so many separate dots, and time is 
understood to be the whole row of dots, 
then both the dots and the row are 
simply things which have no existence in 
our experience. Moments are not experi- 



154 Philosophy 

enced by us as independent realities ; and 
the conception of time as made up by 
adding these non-existent moments to- 
gether is a false conception. A moment 
by itself, independent of what precedes 
and what follows it, is non-existent, is 
nought; and as by adding nought to 
nought you can only get nought, so 
by adding one non-existent moment to 
another you can only get what is non- 
existent — you can only get a non-existent 
time. 

Thus time, space, and matter are not 
experienced by us as independent reali- 
ties; and, if conceived as independent 
realities, they lead to false conclusions: 
matter leads to the false conclusion that 
everything is pre-determined ; space leads 
to the denial of the reality of any whole ; 
time leads to the notion of events as 
abstractions, unrelated dots, which are 
supposed to be independent of the whole 
and yet to be parts of it. 

Let us now turn from moments of time, 
which are not real, and of which we have 



Personality and the Whole 155 

no experience, to our actions, which are 
real and of which we have experience. 
When we act, we act with a purpose, for 
the sake of some object, with an end in 
view. Our actions are never independent 
of the end they are directed to, future 
though it be. Our actions are never 
separate, independent dots; they are a 
continuous process, which is always going 
on : we are always engaged on something ; 
life's work is never done. An action 
has no meaning, except as being directed 
towards an end, which is conceived and 
intended. And the end to which actions 
are directed is implied in them — that is to 
say, they would not be performed at all 
but for the fact that they are aimed at 
some end and directed by some purpose. 
Our actions, therefore, are a process by 
which, or in which, an end is being 
attained. 

If, now, we regard the actions which 
are being performed by us, and the actions 
which we see going on everywhere around 
us, as making up the whole of reality, 



156 Philosophy 

that is, of our experience, we shall have 
to say that everywhere there is activity, 
action; that the whole of reality is in 
activity— that is to say, is in process; 
and that reality is the whole which is 
in process. 

The moment, however, we say this — 
that reality is the whole which is in pro- 
cess — we shall find ourselves in difficul- 
ties ; and being in difficulties we shall have 
alternative courses open to us. We may, 
that is to say, be frightened by the diffi- 
culties, and decide to retrace our steps, 
to give up the supposition that has led us 
into all this difficulty — or not. The 
supposition was that experience is a 
whole, and that none of its parts can exist 
independently of the whole and separate 
from it; and, accordingly, that the notions 
of time, space, and matter as having 
existence independent of the whole must 
be abstractions and therefore falsities. 

On the other hand, if we are not in- 
clined to be frightened because difficulties 
threaten to loom up, we shall stick to our 



Personality and the Whole 157 

original assumption — which was to sup- 
pose that experience is a whole — and we 
shall go forward to meet the difficulties. 

The difficulty that now confronts our 
supposition, that experience is a whole, 
is that we ourselves have said that 
experience or reality is a whole which is in 
process. And, in saying so, we seem to 
have landed ourselves in a self-contra- 
diction of exactly the same kind as we 
said that the notions of time, space, and 
matter led to; for, surely, to speak of a 
whole as being in process is to contradict 
ourselves. If we assume that experience 
or reality is a whole, we cannot go further 
than that. Beyond the whole there can- 
not be anything. If, on the other hand, 
we assume that experience or reality is in 
process, then, as long as it is in process, 
it is not the whole. 

Thus, we seem to have landed ourselves 
in a difficulty, and to be saying that a 
whole is both a whole and not a whole. 
And the only way of escape would seem to 
be to give up one or the other of these 



158 Philosophy 

self-contradictory assertions. But that is 
the counsel of fear. So, instead of follow- 
ing it, let us look at the difficulty and see 
whether we are really compelled to sup- 
pose that a whole cannot be both a whole 
and not a whole. 

If there were anything exceptional or 
unusual about saying that a thing — call it 
A — both is A and is not A, then perhaps 
we might feel rather apprehensive. But 
there is nothing unusual or exceptional 
about statements of this kind; you are 
constantly making, or implying, them 
about everything. If you say, of the 
thing A, simply that it is A — that a man 
is a man — you may be saying something 
that it is very necessary to remind your 
hearers of; but you are not adding to 
knowledge. If you wish to make a 
statement that conveys any further infor- 
mation about A, beyond the fact that it is 
A, you must say that A is B ; and B must 
not be simply A over again. B must be 
something different from A. It must, 
that is to say, be not A. Then you 



Personality and the Whole 159 

have indeed given us information and told 
us something new. You have told us not 
only that A is A, but also that it is B. In 
short, you have said, what you are con- 
stantly saying in effect — that A both is A 
and is not A, that is to say is B. 

If, now, A stands for "the whole/ ' 
and B stands for "in process," there is 
obviously nothing exceptional or unusual 
in saying that the whole, both is the 
whole — that A is A — and that the whole 
is in process — that A is B. 

If it is felt that it must be merely a 
verbal quibble to say that A both is A 
and is not A, that is to say is B, the only 
way to dispel the feeling will be to turn 
away from symbols and words to facts. 
Let us, then, turn to what even the 
Materialist will admit to be facts; and 
we shall discover that there, too, we find 
this to be no verbal quibble, but a simple 
statement of the facts. According to the 
Materialist, the material world, or the 
material universe, being matter in motion, 
is in constant change, and its condition at 



160 Philosophy 

any given moment is the outcome of its 
condition at the previous moment. And 
its condition at the one moment is differ- 
ent from its condition at the next. But, 
we must point out, it is the same universe 
all the time. So the same universe, A, 
both is A and is not A. 

If we are to deny that, we shall have to 
say that there are as many different uni- 
verses as there are successive moments. 
And that is plainly absurd ; there cannot 
be more than one universe, because " uni- 
verse' ' includes everything — if it does not 
include everything whatever, it would not 
be the universe. 

Perhaps this may be made clearer if we 
take an illustration from chemistry. At 
the beginning of a chemical experiment 
the chemical constituents are enumer- 
ated; and, at the end of it, precisely the 
same chemical constituents are found to 
be there. You start with two molecules 
of hydrogen and one of oxygen; you pass 
an electric spark through them, and you 
still have H 2 0, though now you have 



Personality and the Whole 161 

them in the form of a drop of water. 
You have the same three molecules all the 
time; the only difference is that at one 
moment they are water, that is A; and at 
another they are not A — not a liquid 
but a gas. 

As a simple fact, then, every whole, or 
anything that we choose to regard for the 
moment as a whole, is in process. 

The solution of any difficulty that may 
yet be felt lies in the fact that the differ- 
ence between saying that A is A, and that 
A is B, is not a difference in A but in the 
point of view from which you look at it, 
or apprehend it. If we look at A from 
the point of view of B, if, that is to say, 
we look at the whole as being in process, 
we say accordingly that the whole is in 
process. And that is, as a matter of 
fact, the only way in which we human 
beings can actually apprehend the whole. 
But we can also suppose that there is a 
point of view from which the whole is 
seen as a whole, as a reality, as a being, 
not a becoming. Now, each of us human 



ii 



162 Philosophy 

beings can only say "I am becoming." 
There is only one being who can say I 
AM. In that, the full and perfect sense 
of the word, there is only one perfect 
personality; and that is God. 

But this conclusion is really the sup- 
position which was implied in the assump- 
tion which we made at the very beginning, 
when we inquired what our experience 
all came to, and what it all meant. In 
asking that question, we assumed that 
experience was a whole and had a mean- 
ing. And now it turns out that that 
assumption requires a previous supposi- 
tion, the supposition of the existence of a 
perfect Personality, and the belief that 
"in Him we live and move and have our 
being." 

On the assumption, which we now see 
that we have made from the beginning, 
that experience is a whole and has a 
meaning, and that the reality of the whole 
is a perfect Personality, it will follow 
that our human personalities are but 
feeble copies of it, if for no other rea- 



Personality and the Whole 163 

son than for the reason that none of 
us can say that we are not in process, 
not becoming, that as yet we are. We 
are copies, made in the image of God. 
As copies, we have free-will, given to us 
by Him who made us. Because we 
have free-will, the future is not pre- 
determined but will be what we help 
to make it. Because we have free-will 
we are helping to determine — for better 
or for worse — what the future will be. 
The whole, that is to say, is in process, 
and we can help to advance it or retard 
it. Process, or activity in process, implies 
an end — a good which is being realised 
and an end which is yet to be attained. 
That good is expressed in the words: 
11 Thou shalt love thy God with all thy 
heart and with all thy soul, and thy 
neighbour as thyself. " And that love is 
in our power to give or to withhold ; we 
are free to do so or not to do so. 

To sum up then. If we assume that 
there is an answer to the question which 
we put, when we inquire what our experi- 



164 Philosophy 

ence all comes to, we assume that experi- 
ence is a whole; and thereby we assume 
that its parts are not self -existent and not 
independent either of each other or of the 
whole. 

In the case of things occupying space, 
such as the chariot, we saw that none 
were self -existent or independent of each 
other. We saw it also to be equally true 
of processes which occupy time, and of 
the moments into which we suppose time 
to be divided. And in the case of actions, 
which we will and perform, we found that 
none are separate and independent; but 
that, in all our actions, we are doing 
something with a purpose — that is, for 
the sake of something else. 

Next, we saw that, although we dis- 
tinguish between space and time, yet the 
idea of matter in motion implies both time 
and space : we can suppose no movements 
of matter, unless we suppose that they 
take place in space and occupy time. 
Neither space nor time is self -existent, for 
movement requires both. 



Personality and the Whole 165 

But matter in motion, or the movement 
of matter, if taken by itself, requires us 
to believe that one movement is deter- 
mined by a previous movement, that is to 
say, is pre-determined. And, if matter 
in motion alone existed and were self- 
existent, there would be no more to be 
said. But we exist and we act ; and, when 
we act, we choose between alternative 
courses, both of which are possible; 
and, as both are equally possible, neither 
is pre-determined. We do not deal in 
ready-made futures. 

The next point is that if the future is 
not ready-made and pre-determined, the 
idea which leads to the belief that it is pre- 
determined must be a false idea. And 
the false idea is the notion that matter, 
with its pre-determined movements, is an 
independent and self-existent reality. In 
truth, on our assumption, matter in 
motion is an abstraction from reality; 
and the idea that it is not an abstraction 
from reality, but is the whole of reality, is 
a false idea. 



1 66 Philosophy 

Its falsity is shown by the fact that it 
requires us to believe that space is infinite ; 
and, if space is infinite, it cannot be a 
whole. But infinite space is an abstrac- 
tion from reality, and is neither a whole 
nor the whole. Similarly time, and espe- 
cially time regarded as infinite, is an ab- 
straction from the whole of experience, 
and is obviously not the whole of reality. 

Thus time, space, and matter are not 
experienced by us as independent reali- 
ties. As experienced, they are elements 
in our experience as a whole. It is only 
when they are abstracted from experi- 
ence that they are considered to be inde- 
pendent realities; and then, because they 
are abstractions, they are not realities. 

Turning, then, from these abstractions 
— time, space, and matter — we find that 
our experience is the experience of ac- 
tivity; and that activity is a process. 
But it is part of our original assumption 
that experience is a whole. To us, human 
beings, and from our human point of view, 
reality must present itself as a process. 



Personality and the Whole 167 

Only to God can it present itself as a 
whole. 

The conviction, therefore, with which 
we started, that experience, as a whole, 
must have some meaning and some pur- 
pose, is the conviction, it turns out, that 
there is a perfect Personality, and that 
"in Him we live and move and have our 
being. " And our actions are not pre- 
determined. We can, if we will, do His 
will, and draw near to Him both in our 
hearts and in our actions. But, to draw 
near to Him, we must love Him, with all 
our heart and with all our soul, and must 
love our neighbour as ourself . So far as 
we do that, we are acting up to our 
philosophy, are putting our philosophy in 
practice, and are practical philosophers. 



INDEX 



Abstractions, 16-20, 21, 22, 
26, 28, 68, 70, 71, 101, 
102, 114, 115, 145, 146, 
149, 153, 165 

Action, 100, 108, 112, 126, 

135, 136, 137, 140, 141. 

155 ff., 163, 164 
Analysis, 28 
Appearance and reality, 

123 ff. 
Apple, 52, 53 

Assumption, see Hypothesis 
Atoms, 124 
Attention, 23, 24 



B 



Bell, 51, 52 



Causation, universal, 37 ff. 

Causes, 37 ff. 

Chariot, the, 130 ff., 135, 

164 
Circle, expanding, 12, 13, 31 
Clapper, 51, 52 
Common sense, 97 
Conceptions, 25 
Consciousness, 49, 93 
Consequences, 141, 142 



Constructive philosophy, 35 

Curve, the, 24, 25, 26, 28, 

32-36, 48-50, 61-65, 

83, 85, 90, 91, 92, 96, 

109, no, III 



Destructive philosophy, 35 
Digging-stick, 113 
Dogmatism, 6, 8, 9, n, 12, 

30,31 
Dots, 153 
Doubt, 3 



Earth, 40 
Effects, 39 ff. 
Egg, the, 28 
Electrons, 124 
End, the, 104 ff. 
Ends, 29, 30, 163 
Epistemology, 102 
Evolution, 39, 64 
Existence, 49, 109, in 
Existence and knowledge, 

32 

Expectation, 87, 88 

Experience, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 30, 
31, 60, 62, 63, 64, 67, 
82, 83,90,91, 106-113, 
114, 115, 129, 157 

Experiment, 21, 31 



169 



170 



Index 



Explanation, 43 
External world, 63 



Feelings, 49, 53 
Finality, 8, 13 
Freedom, 41 
Free-will, 163 
Future, the, 10, 141, 142 

G 

God, 112, 115, 119, 122, 126, 
128, 129, 162, 163, 167 

Good, 2, 9, 14, 15, 41, 42, 
43, 44, 99, 100, 104 fL, 
115, 126 



H 



Habit, 88 

"Here," 118 

Hume, 79 fL, 84, 85, 86, 87, 

88,91 
Hydrogen, 160 
Hypothesis, 13, 31, 66 
Hypothesis, of matter in 

motion, 42, 44 



Idealism, 34-66 
Ideas, 61 
Ignorance, 114 
Infinity, 149, 151, 152 



Knower and known, 29 
Knowledge, 108, in, 141 
Knowledge and existence, 
32,33 



Laws, 37 fL, 64 
Life, 2, 3, 102 fL 
Love, 129 

M 

Materialism, 34-66, 126, 

143 
Material things, 109, 116 
Matter, 26, 27, 33, 35, 42- 
44, 51,54 fL, 65, 78, 79, 
93, 145, 146; in motion, 
68, 138, 139, 165 
Meaning, 1, 2, 3, 4, 30, 47, 

100, 101, 106 
Mind, 26, 33, 35, 93 
Mind and matter, 26 
Molecules, 36, 37, 124, 160 
Moments, 137, 138, 151, 

„ 153,154,164 
Moon, 40 
Motion, 2^^ 37 



N 



Nature, uniformity of, 38 fL 
Nightmare, 147, 152 
"Now," 120 



Object and subject, 25, 29, 
30, 36, 37, 49, 50, 85, 
92,93 

Ontology, 102 

Orange, 51, 52, 55, 72, 73, 

Organism, 12, 13 
Oxygen, 160 



Index 



171 



Parts, 130, fL, 151, 154 

Past, the, 10 

Person, 62 

Personality, 129 ff., 162, 167 

Philosophy, 1, 64, 67, 81, 
107, 113, 114; in prac- 
tice, 98 ff . ; and science, 

31 

Plough, 113 

Possibilities, alternative, 

145 
Possibility, 142 
Pre-determination, 41 ff. 

139, 140, 144, 146, 165 
Process, 134, 142, 156, 166 
Psychology, 68 
Purpose, 109, 155, 167 

Q 

Qualities, 17, 18, 19, 20 
R 

Ready-made futures, 144, 

165 

Real things, and real per- 
sons, 73 ff. 

Reality, 35, 42, 44, 46, 74, 
157, 166 

Reflection, 5 



Scepticism, 6, 7, 11, 30, 31, 

67 ff., 98, 99 
Science, 4, 15, 16,17,68,91, 

92, 124; abstract, 18, 

19, 21, 31 
Sciences, the separate, 17 
Self, 79, 80, 84, 95 



Sensationalism, 68, 69, 70, 
71, 126 

Sensationalists, 59 ff . 
Sensations, 45, 51 ff., 69 ff., 

75-80,94,95, 109, no: 

loose and separate, 82, 

83, 86, 87, 90 
Senses, the, 36 
Sight, 53 
Solipsism, 75 
Space, 117 ff., 132, 134 ffv 

146 ff., 166 
Species, 39 
Stick, the, 29, 30, 33 
Student, the, 20, 21, 141 
Subject, the, 23, 24, 25, 26, 

29, 49, 61, 83-85, 92; 

96; and object, 25 
Suppositions, 60, 61, 62, 81 , 

82 f 98, 114-117, 122, 

129 
Synthesis, 28 



Taste, 51, 52 

"Then," 120 

"There," 118 

Things, 45, 46, 47, 53, 96; 

in the abstract, 22, 23; 

material, 36, 63 
Thoughts, 46, 49, 50, 109, 

no 
Time, 10, 120 ff., 133, 150 ff., 

166 
Toothache, 82 , 83 
Truth, 103 



U 



Uniformity of nature, 38 ff., 
64 



172 



Index 



Universal causation, 64 
Universe, 159, 160 



W 



Watch, the, 28 
Watchmaker, 130 



Weight, 17, 19, 20, 23, 28, 

153 
Whole, the, 3, 5, 11, 13, 16, 

35, in, 125, 129 ff., 

146, 147, 148, 154, 157, 

158, 166, 167 
Will, 100, 113, 126, 135, 137 
World, the, 2 
World-process, 134 



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Initiation 
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By Emile Faguet 

Translated from the French by 

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This volume is planned for the beginner. 
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racial and philosophical. 

The book offers an Introduction to 
Philosophy from a new point of view. 
It contains, also, a valuable glossary of 
the terms employed in these and similar 
discussions. 



The 
Science of Happiness 

By Jean Finot 

Author of " Problem of the Sexes," etc. 
Translated from the French by 

Mary J. Safford 

8°. $1.75 net 

The author considers a subject, the solution of 
which offers more enticement to the well-wisher 
of the race than the gold of the Incas did to the 
treasure-seekers of Spain, who themselves doubt- 
less looked upon the coveted yellow metal, 
however mistakenly, as a key to the happiness 
which all are trying to find. " Amid the noisy 
tumult of life, amid the dissonance that divides 
man from man," remarks M. Finot, "the 
Science of Happiness tries to discover the 
divine link which binds humanity to happi- 
ness through the soul and through the union 
of souls/ ' The author considers the nature 
of happiness and the means of its attainment, 
as well as many allied questions. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



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